Nearest And Dearest

Eli comes up with a plan to get himself out of gherkin counting by faking a grave case of influenza. Nellie's initially fooled by the ruse, but has a few tricks up her own sleeve!

The "Gnomes of Colne" are having a productivity meeting in the pickling shed, namely how to fill the pools coupon in the next weekend. However, Nellie is having none of this and sends Eli off to count the gherkins in the stock room. He soon comes up with a plan to pretend to be ill, and proudly announces to Stan that Nellie will be tucking him up in bed by dinner time.

Nellie falls for his phantom temperature, and after proudly proclaiming she will "dognose" his case, along with the help of Arkwrights' Family Doctor, she announces Eli is pregnant. The fatal upset to Eli's plan comes when Nellie overhears him and Stan dancing around the bedroom so she decides to take revenge.

By turning up the electric blanket to full and hiding heaters under the bed, she soon has Eli believing he has a bad case of "Blackwater Fever", and adding a fictitious doctor, a vicar to read the last rites and an undertaker with a tape measure to the proceedings, she soon has him thinking his time is up.

But as is always the case, the ending turns out in Eli's favour. After being filled in by Stan of exactly what Nellie is up to, he's decided to go to the South of France to celebrate his "last few weeks on Earth", with money from the joint account.