The Thin Blue Line

Fowler is pleased to get his name mentioned in the local paper following the successful raid by CID on the home of drugs dealer Harry the Spike. Harry has a good defence counsel however and Fowler is nervous of meeting him.

Employing Goody's services as model, Fowler is briefing his constables on the latest proposed changes to uniform. Habib prefers a more brash, 'sexy' American style, but Goody himself is quite taken with the new design.

CID, meanwhile, are on the trail of drug dealer Harry the Spike. Frustrated on countless prior occasions and now desperate to get his man, Grim goes along with Boyle's plan to set Spike up. He enlists the help of Fowler and his officers to raid Harry the Spike's home. During the course of the search, Goody finds some drugs behind the cooker.

Back at the station, Raymond hears that Harry has enlisted the services of the most fearsome QC in the country, Algernon Sourgravy, and so begins rehearsing and preparing Goody for the grilling he can expect in court - unfortunately he keeps bursting into tears.

When Harry the Spike's barrister arrives, however, it transpires that Sourgravy has been taken ill and replaced by none other than local Mayoress Christabel Wickham, a commanding woman whom Fowler has fancied ever since his school days. Meanwhile, Grim is having a crisis of conscience about his part in the set-up raid and Goody tells Habib and Gladstone that he was sure the drugs hadn't been behind the cooker when he first looked.

Habib relays her concerns to Fowler, who is outraged at the apparent corruption. He is frustrated in obtaining a confession from a still shaken Grim, but when pressed by a Wickham, who believes she is to be squarely defeated, Raymond reveals the truth - that Goody was still wearing the as-yet unofficial new uniform during the raid, and thus his arrest was illegal.

Unfortunately for Fowler, his conversation with the Mayoress has a rather potent alternative connotation, taken out of context...