A Comedy On This Day: Shelley - Happy Birthday - R.I.P. (25 August 1992)

 Written by David Firth, one of four writers on this final series. This story feels like it could have been told much the same way in a fifties sitcom, with Ted pretending to be bedridden with a feigned slipped disc after no-one remembers his birthday. Contemporary detail comes from Shelley complaining about the Doctor's surgery having become a health centre with automated telephone booking and receptionists who type into their Wang personal computers when he's trying to speak to them. 

 Oddly, the one thing to make me laugh in this episode isn't even meant to be a joke, when Shelley snaps at Ted, "Will you stop mistaking me for a young person?" That's always an irritation of middle age, but not one often depicted - old people still thinking that you're young in some way, when you're acutely aware that you have nothing in common with the people who really are young.