Drop The Dead Donkey: George’s Wedding?

There is something very suspicious about Series 4 of Drop the Dead Donkey, you know. And it involves poor old downtrodden news editor George Dent.

For years, we’ve heard about his dreadful life with Margaret, his wife. About her cruelty towards him, about her affairs, about him having to go and sleep alone in the attic… and about how she eventually divorces him. This comes to a head early in the aforementioned Series 4, with “The Day of the Mum” (TX: 13/10/94). The day Margaret remarries.

Except brilliantly, rather than resulting in more misery for George, the episode culminates with his delicious revenge instead:

DAVE: Oh no, let me get this straight. You hired a beautiful call girl to accompany you to your ex-wife’s wedding just to rub her nose in it, and then you got this woman to make a pass at the groom… and ruined their wedding day. That’s what you did, isn’t it George?
GEORGE: Yes. That’s what I did. And it was the best £2000 I have ever spent.

Indeed, for a while, things begin to look up for George. In “Helen’s Parents” two weeks later, he’s met someone new. And not some “sad old spinster who’s picked up George because her favourite Labrador’s died”, as Henry so delicately puts it. She’s gorgeous.

GEORGE: I’d like you all to meet Anna, everybody.
ANNA: I am very pleased to meet you all.
GEORGE: Anna is from Poland.
ANNA: But now my English is quite good. One day I hope to even understand Loyd Grossman.

In case you thought the show would let George be happy for long, you are very much mistaken.¹ The very first time we see her alone with George in his office – “This is my wall planner – where I plan things… on my wall” – we are immediately suspicious of Anna’s reactions. The show doesn’t leave us with much mystery about her intentions towards him.

Unfortunately for George, things move worryingly fast. At the start of the very next episode, George and Anna announce their engagement, after knowing each other for, erm, nine days. But don’t worry, they’re not getting married until… “Saturday week”. And it doesn’t take long for the newsroom gang to realise what’s happening.

JOY: I’ll put both dates in my diary, then. A week on Saturday: wedding. One year later: divorce.
DAVE: Why a year?
JOY: Cos after she’s lived 12 months with George, she gets a British passport.
HENRY: If she lives with George as long as that, she should get the Victoria Cross.

One thing Drop the Dead Donkey excels at is not dragging out storylines. Here, the show is not content to just sit there having everyone make remarks about how gullible George is for a full 25 minutes. Halfway through the episode, they’ve already done some research on Anna using one of Damien’s dodgy sources. The result? She’s already under investigation by the immigration services… oh, and married somebody else eight months ago. Predictably, George doesn’t take these revelations very well, and accuses them all of being jealous. Not even meeting Anna’s ex-husband does anything to change his mind.

Thankfully – at least for George – we’re reaching the end of this little storyline. In the next episode, “Crime Time”, George makes a very specific request to Dave:

GEORGE: Dave. You may not realise this, but my marriage to Margaret wasn’t very happy. But through all the agony, and humiliation, and all those other horrid things that happened to me, I always knew that something wonderful would come along to make up for all that misery. And now something has: Anna. And it would mean a lot to me if you were there at my side when we tie the knot. Will you be my best man?
DAVE: Well, I…
GEORGE: It would mean the world to me.
DAVE: …alright.

And it gets worse:

HELEN: Er, Joy. You’re not gonna believe this, but George has asked me to be a bridesmaid.
JOY: Yeah, and me.
SALLY: And me.

All of which seems to be setting us up for some fun later in the series. Sadly, it doesn’t come to pass. By the end of the episode, the story has already reached its – slightly odd – conclusion. Dave has realised he can’t let George get hurt by going through with this, goes to Anna himself, and… offers to marry her. Anna doesn’t believe him, and starts checking him for recording devices, which involves Dave removing his trousers. Of course, George catches them, assumes the obvious, and that’s it. Everything is over. Anna turns down a marriage proposal from Gus at the end of the episode – “That’s very kind of you – but I have to draw the line somewhere!” – and walks out of George’s life.

And that’s the end of all that.

Except… it isn’t, quite. Because something rather suspicious happens four weeks later. The penultimate episode of the series is called “The Wedding” (TX: 8/12/94), oddly enough. Not George and Anna’s wedding, of course. Instead, two characters who we’ve never seen before, and will never see again, surprise the office. Hello, Michelle and Ben.

MICHELLE: Only five more days to the big day.
BEN: To our big day.
MICHELLE: Don’t forget the hen night on Wednesday. That’s girls only, of course. Wouldn’t want any of you boys there. I might be tempted to have one last fling.
GEORGE: Damn!
BEN: And, of course, all you lads are invited to my stag night. If only to stop me from having a last fling.
MICHELLE: Ben!

They leave.

HELEN: I give it six months.

Michelle and Ben are peculiar. The show doesn’t make a habit of foregrounding other members of the office staff, especially as such a clear plot device. Moreover, their utterly wet nature… well, surely they remind you of a certain couple which split up a few weeks ago?

Things get even more suspicious. Part Two starts, and it’s the stag party. And who is the best man? Why, that would be, erm, Dave. Who was best man to George a few weeks ago, and is now best man again. To someone we’ve never seen before until this episode.

HENRY: You have ordered the stripper, haven’t you?
DAVE: Henry, ordering a stripper would be vulgar and tacky. Course I’ve done it.

Of course, the hen night and stag night have accidentally been arranged at the same pub, because of course they have, and all the usual shenanigans ensue. (It’s Gus who gets handcuffed to the lamp post, incidentally.) And then comes the end of the night, and Dave and Michelle are doing a spot of close dancing:

MICHELLE: Do you fancy me?
DAVE: Um… well, no. Well, yes…
MICHELLE: Make love to me, then.
DAVE: What?
MICHELLE: Go on. What’s wrong with me?
DAVE: Well, nothing. But I couldn’t, it’d be indefensible. Ben’s chosen me as his best man, for God’s sake.
MICHELLE: Of course. It’s just I’ve only ever been with Ben, you see. I sort of feel like if I could have one wild fling and sort of get it out my system, it might help to make my marriage to Ben more secure.
DAVE: Well, that’s fair enough.

He drags her off.

And there we have it. And we’re left with some things to ponder.

Because maybe all this is exactly how the series was planned, and there’s nothing mysterious here. But there are enough clues here to give me pause. The slight anticlimax with Anna’s final episode; the introduction of a couple we’ve never seen before so we can do a stag do episode; the fact that Dave was supposed to be best man at both weddings.

What if “The Wedding” was supposed to be George’s stag party, not Ben’s? And then they decided against carrying on George and Anna’s relationship for that long, but still wanted to use the stag material, so just introduced a random couple in order for them to still do the episode? So the writers made up a different wedding for people we’ve never seen before, and did the rest of the stag and hen stuff pretty much as they intended?

Of course, I have absolutely no proof of this. I repeat: zero actual proof. But if you’d come up up with the image of Gus being handcuffed naked to a lamp post – and knew Robert Duncan was willing to do it for real – wouldn’t you find some excuse to rescue that plot and do it anyway?

Let’s assume all this is true for a moment. In which case, the obvious question to ask is: why did they abandon the idea of George getting married? It could be any number of things. Perhaps they realised that George being happy for so many episodes wouldn’t be funny for that long, or that the story would simply run out of steam stretched over so many episodes.

But another idea plays at the back of my mind. Perhaps the original idea was for Dave to sleep with Anna at the stag do… and they pulled back from it. Maybe it’s just a little too cruel. Could George ever truly forgive Dave for doing that? After all, back in “Crime Time”, George doesn’t actually catch Dave in flagrante with Anna – he just thinks he does. Dave, for once, is innocent.

Anyway, who the hell knows what really happened, aside from Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin.² But there is one more possible hint of a last-minute change of plan. Both previous series of Drop the Dead Donkey ended with unusual, climactic episodes of the show. The climax of Series 2 was “Xmas Party” (TX: 19/12/91), where we see the office in a way we’ve never quite seen before, and has a definite end-of-series as well as end-of-year feel. Series 3 goes a stage further, with “Awards” (TX: 18/03/93), a hugely atypical show set entirely at an awards ceremony.³

Series 4, meanwhile, ends with “Damien and the Weather Girl” (TX: 15/12/94), about Damien’s newfound sexual exploits. And while it might be one of the more memorable episodes of the show, it doesn’t really scream end-of-series, at least not to me. Because maybe it was never supposed to be last in the series. Maybe it was a last-minute replacement.

If Episode 11 was supposed to be George’s stag do… is it possible that Episode 12 was supposed to be the wedding ceremony itself? The perfect climax for the series? Why else bring up the beautiful idea of Helen, Joy and Sally as bridesmaids?

I could be talking absolute rubbish. But dammit, I’m still suspicious.

1. Unlike in real life, where Jeff Rawle ended up marrying Nina Marc, who plays Anna, in 1998. And they’re still together. Awwwww. ↩

2. It is worth noting that “The Wedding”, like a fair few episodes of Series 4, isn’t actually written by Hamilton and Jenkin – it was by Malcolm Williamson. But it was surely Hamilton and Jenkin who planned the overall arc for the series, regardless of who wrote the individual episodes. ↩

3. Which definitely isn’t based on The British Comedy Awards. ↩

Read more about...

drop the dead donkey