Digger (Bottom episode)
Encyclopedia
"Digger" is the first episode of the second series of British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 TV
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 sitcom Bottom
Bottom (TV series)
Bottom was a British sitcom television series that originally aired on BBC2 between 1991 and 1995. It was written by comic duo Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson who star as Richie and Eddie, two flatmates living on the dole in Hammersmith, London...

. It was first broadcast on 1 October 1992.

Synopsis

After visiting a dating agency, Richie and his 'Butler', Jives (Eddie) prepare to entertain aristocracy
Aristocracy
Aristocracy , is a form of government in which a few elite citizens rule. The term derives from the Greek aristokratia, meaning "rule of the best". In origin in Ancient Greece, it was conceived of as rule by the best qualified citizens, and contrasted with monarchy...

, with Richie having sold his kidney on the black market to afford the caviar
Caviar
Caviar, sometimes called black caviar, is a luxury delicacy, consisting of processed, salted, non-fertilized sturgeon roe. The roe can be "fresh" or pasteurized, the latter having much less culinary and economic value....

 and the dinner jackets.

Plot

The episode begins with the pair in Lily Linneker's (Lisa Maxwell
Lisa Maxwell (actress)
Lisa Maxwell is an English actress and television presenter.-Early life:Born in the Elephant & Castle district of Southwark, South London in November 1963, she was trained at the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts, and first acted on TV aged 11 in a schools programme A Place Like Home...

) Love
Love
Love is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In philosophical context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection. Love is central to many religions, as in the Christian phrase, "God is love" or Agape in the Canonical gospels...

 Bureau. They are watching the love videos they made earlier. Eddie's video is typically boisterous and frisky. Richie's is characteristically nervous. At the end of the video, he suddenly enthusiastically lies, claiming to be the wealthy Duke
Duke
A duke or duchess is a member of the nobility, historically of highest rank below the monarch, and historically controlling a duchy...

 of Kidderminster
Kidderminster
Kidderminster is a town, in the Wyre Forest district of Worcestershire, England. It is located approximately seventeen miles south-west of Birmingham city centre and approximately fifteen miles north of Worcester city centre. The 2001 census recorded a population of 55,182 in the town...

. The manager matches Richie with the third Viscountess of Moldavia
Moldavia
Moldavia is a geographic and historical region and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester river...

, Lady Natasha Letitia Sarah Jane Wellesley Obstromsky Ponsonsky Smythe Smythe Smythe Smythe Smythe Oblomov Boblomov Dob (Helen Lederer
Helen Lederer
Helen Lederer is a Welsh comedienne, writer and actress who emerged as part of the alternative comedy boom at the beginning of the 1980s.-Career:...

). Meanwhile, Eddie turns down a date with the Duchess of York
Sarah, Duchess of York
Sarah, Duchess of York is a British charity patron, spokesperson, writer, film producer, television personality and former member of the British Royal Family. She is the former wife of Prince Andrew, Duke of York, whom she married from 1986 to 1996...

, with great disgust.

Preparing on the night of Richie's date, Richie informs Eddie that he must be "Jives", his butler
Butler
A butler is a domestic worker in a large household. In great houses, the household is sometimes divided into departments with the butler in charge of the dining room, wine cellar, and pantry. Some also have charge of the entire parlour floor, and housekeepers caring for the entire house and its...

, for the evening and speak in a stereotypical accent. Richie reveals that he sold a kidney for £
Pound sterling
The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...

300 to pay for the evening, but is dismissive of the loss of a bodily organ, claiming that he will buy another kidney after marrying the Viscountess and selling off some of her property.

Whilst preparing food for the date, Richie mistakes bowls of caviar
Caviar
Caviar, sometimes called black caviar, is a luxury delicacy, consisting of processed, salted, non-fertilized sturgeon roe. The roe can be "fresh" or pasteurized, the latter having much less culinary and economic value....

 for uncleaned dishes, and throws them away. After Eddie points out this mistake, Richie attempts to recover by asserting that they've changed the design of caviar. Richie also notices that Eddie has not mashed the potatoes
Mashed potato
Mashed potato is made by mashing freshly boiled potatoes with a ricer, fork, potato masher, food mill, or whipping them with a hand beater. Dehydrated and frozen mashed potatoes are available in many places...

. Eddie explains that their potato masher is missing after being borrowed by a friend by the name of Harry "I'll Do Anything For Half A Pint" Grundy. Eddie explains that surgeons couldn't remove it after it became lodged into his stomach. Annoyed by this, Richie repeatedly slams Eddie's head into the saucepan containing the potatoes, thus mashing them with his head and calling it 'squashed potatoes'.

After a false alarm with a female charity collector (whom Eddie assaults, then relieves of her collecting tin), Richie's date arrives. Richie nudges Eddie to take her coat, Eddie staggers over to her with his face still covered in mashed potatoes. After removing her wrap and lowering his glasses, he looks at her breasts, causing Richie to become enraged and shouting "She's mine! Get back to your kitchen!" and beats him repeatedly with an umbrella. The Viscountess watches this with great amusement and expresses her delight to Richie, that she has at last finally met some "genuine" aristocracy rather than another faker.

Richie then escorts the Viscountess to the "Polo Lounge" (in reality just their usual snug section of the flat with a decorated plate of Polo mints
Polo (mint)
Polos are a brand of sweets whose defining feature is the hole in the middle. The peppermint flavoured polo was first manufactured in the United Kingdom in 1948 by employee John Bargewell at the Rowntree's Factory, York, a range of flavours followed...

 on the table). Richie goes on to state that this flat is simply his "London pomme de terre
Potato
The potato is a starchy, tuberous crop from the perennial Solanum tuberosum of the Solanaceae family . The word potato may refer to the plant itself as well as the edible tuber. In the region of the Andes, there are some other closely related cultivated potato species...

", and that his main castles are scattered all over the country as he never knows where he is going to be. He blames this on fox hunting
Fox hunting
Fox hunting is an activity involving the tracking, chase, and sometimes killing of a fox, traditionally a red fox, by trained foxhounds or other scent hounds, and a group of followers led by a master of foxhounds, who follow the hounds on foot or on horseback.Fox hunting originated in its current...

 and claims he could "start off in "Burke-shire"
Berkshire
Berkshire is a historic county in the South of England. It is also often referred to as the Royal County of Berkshire because of the presence of the royal residence of Windsor Castle in the county; this usage, which dates to the 19th century at least, was recognised by the Queen in 1957, and...

 and end up in... Twat-shire".

Returning to the kitchen for dinner, Richie repeatedly finds double entendre
Double entendre
A double entendre or adianoeta is a figure of speech in which a spoken phrase is devised to be understood in either of two ways. Often the first meaning is straightforward, while the second meaning is less so: often risqué or ironic....

s
in what Eddie is saying while he serves the food. After several comments from Eddie to the Viscountess, including "Pork?" and "I was only asking her if she wanted a portion!", Richie thinking Eddie is referring to sex
Sex
In biology, sex is a process of combining and mixing genetic traits, often resulting in the specialization of organisms into a male or female variety . Sexual reproduction involves combining specialized cells to form offspring that inherit traits from both parents...

, fights with him viciously behind a curtain in the kitchen.

After dinner, a bedazzled Richie asks the Viscountess to marry him. She eagerly accepts, Richie not hearing her explanation - that she needs to marry quickly or be impoverished forever. An increasingly excited Richie asks her if she believes in sex before marriage. After some convincing, he finally accepts that he is indeed to lose his virginity that night.

While Richie prepares in his bedroom, a suspicious Eddie gets the Viscountess to reveal that her family has lost their entire fortune in a Moldavian civil war and that she must marry the first stupidly wealthy aristocrat she can find, otherwise her entire family shall remain penniless, and she despises poor people. Not caring for Richie's feelings, he makes a pass at her, claiming that to want to marry Richie "you would have to be clinically insane or on the make." After tossing some loose change over his shoulder, he claims he has a "few quid
Quid
Quid may refer to:* Pound sterling, British slang for £1 in currency* Euro , in Irish slang* Irish punt, Irish slang* Australian pound, Australian slang * Quid , a French encyclopedia...

 laying about the place" and that if it is stupidity she is looking for, then "There's nobody more stupid then the Hitlers!" - after which he smashes a dinner plate on his forehead. The Viscountess rejects Eddie's advances but goes on to tell Eddie "If anything should happen to Richie, I will be onto you and up your trouser leg like a whippet
Whippet
The Whippet is a breed of dog in the sighthound family. They are active and playful and are physically similar to a small Greyhound.- Description :...

". After Eddie faints, she goes to join Richie in the bedroom.

After he excites himself reading More Joy of Sex, Richie's big moment finally arrives. The Viscountess strips before and climbs into his bed. However, at the last moment, he appears to suffer a heart attack, collapsing with a "Just typical..." expression on his face.

Richie awakens in an ambulance with Eddie, who reveals that it was simply a mistake by the surgeon who removed his kidney (causing his whole urinary system to backfire) that caused him to pass out. He also accidentally lets slip how he and the Viscountess passed the five-hour wait for the emergency services—she was "crap" in bed. The episode ends with an enraged Richie zapping Eddie on the head with a heart defibrillator
Defibrillation
Defibrillation is a common treatment for life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias, ventricular fibrillation and pulseless ventricular tachycardia. Defibrillation consists of delivering a therapeutic dose of electrical energy to the affected heart with a device called a defibrillator...

.

Production

On the Bottom Fluff out-takes video, it is shown that the entire first scene of this episode, with Richie and Eddie filling out their dating forms, and featuring an uncredited appearance by Nadia Sawalha
Nadia Sawalha
Nadia Sawalha is an English actress and television presenter.Sawalha is perhaps best known for her role as Annie Palmer in the BBC soap opera EastEnders during the 1990s, although most of her television work is now as a presenter rather than an actress...

, was edited out for timing reasons. Most of the removed dialogue would later be recycled to appear in the first Bottom Live stage show, and in some scenes in the following series.

Continuity and Production Errors

  • Eddie is acting as a butler whilst Richie and his new girlfriend are having a meal. After Eddie says "Pork?" to her, Richie stands up and shouts "Eddie, how dare you!?". A full shot of the table with all three of the characters is seen, when he continues by saying "She is my fiancée!". In the background, there is a picture of Elvis Presley
    Elvis Presley
    Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....

    , in which the reflection of a boom mic is seen in the photo.
  • Richie and Eddie are finding a way to mash potatoes. Richie shoves Eddie's head repeatedly into the pan to mash the potatoes. As his head enters the pan, the pan bends, showing that the pan is made from cardboard, soft plastic, or some other flexible material.
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