- Date First Aired: 23/02/1992
The episode begins with Laura going into the manager office to inform Brittas to come down for a foot inspection. However, Brittas is rather busy and can't come down. Said business has to do with the fights happening at the centre; Brittas has figured out what's causing the fighting in the buildings, and he's called a meeting to discuss this. before she leaves, Laura asks how the Rotarian dinner went, to which Brittas replies that it went well with minor hiccups.
Helen comes into the centre looking for Gordon. Apparently, he didn't come home last night and she's worrying about him. After Carole reassures her that he's fine, she tells Helen that she's decided to give Ben more space - by moving him from the drawer to the cupboard. During this, a mouse runs by and makes it into Ben's cupboard, much to Carole's horror.
It soon becomes clear that something is wrong when, discussing his belief that the centre may have sick building syndrome and how he's gotten an expert to look into it, Brittas seems to be making every attempt to not move from his spot behind his desk. Further examination reveals that his feet have been put in a box of concrete, courtesy of the Rotarians knocking him out for being his annoying self during dinner. An attempt to remove him from the concrete (using a hammer) fails, and Brittas has to take the expert, (Graham Hanson) around by being moved around on a sack truck. Meanwhile, Carole tries to kill the mouse but it and Ben become friends, which Carole becomes distraught by, since she fears that he prefers the mouse over her.
It's not too long before Brittas starts to mess the tour with Hanson; Hanson's pen (who was given to him by his grandmother) is destroyed when Brittas provokes a man is hitting his coat with a racket, his personal computer also gets destroyed, and his foot is run over. Eventually, he can't take anymore and concludes that it's Brittas who is causing the fighting. He tells everyone to get out but ends up having a woman fall on him. Brittas takes this as a sign of Sick Building Syndrome and has everyone evacuated, with Carole taking Ben away from the mouse. However, Brittas doesn't account for the fact that he didn't ask anyone to wheel him out, which leads to Laura cornering him and taking him to his office.
Laura proceeds to confront Brittas over his behavior. She accuses him of not listening properly and upsetting everyone. Evidently, the idea of subtext is a completely alien idea to him, so Laura tries to teach him this, using the example of how Helen did not like the moped he gave her as a birthday gift in the last episode. Laura gets Brittas to ask Helen about it and he finds that she wanted a car. Brittas thinks he's started to get the hang of subtext, which is proven wrong when he starts to annoy the stonemason who has come to set him free from the concrete.
Tropes in this episode:
- Accidental Misnaming: Brittas calls one of the women doing an assertiveness course in the gymnasium Marjorie, even though her actual name is Rosemary.
- Agony of the Feet: Hanson's foot gets run over by the sack truck that Brittas is being moved in.
- Amplified Animal Aptitude: The mouse in Ben's cupboard is somehow capable of playing peek-a-boo with him, although there is nothing to indicate that it is anything other than a normal mouse otherwise.
- Ass Shove: Apparently, Colin got an acupuncture needle to the base of his spine when he left it carelessly on his motorcycle and sat on it.
- Call-Back: When Laura speaks to Brittas, she mentions how Helen got a moped from him in "An Inspector Calls" and tries to show Brittas that she actually didn't like the gift. Additionally, Carole mentions Helen's advice from that episode about keeping Ben in enclosed spaces and has moved him to the cupboard.
- Cement Shoes: A non-lethal variant - Brittas annoyed the Rotarians so much that they put his feet in a cardboard box full of concrete.
- Didn't Think This Through: It doesn't occur to Brittas that he should have asked someone to wheel him out until after he gets everyone to leave the building due to Sick Building Syndrome.
- Enraged by Idiocy: Brittas gets Graham to come in to access whether the building has Sick Building Syndrome. By the end of his visit, Brittas has annoyed the guy so much that he loses it and starts shouting to people to get out whilst they still can.
- Frying Pan of Doom: Carole was prepared to kill a mouse using her frying pan before she saw that it was getting along with Ben.
- Gift-Giving Gaffe: According to Brittas, Helen once gave him a tie that he felt didn't go with anything he had, a fact which he said with Brutal Honesty to her. Her response was that she had to go check something in the kitchen, before eventually giving him some money so that he could buy a tie that he really wanted.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Carole gets rather jealous when she finds out that Ben has struck up a friendship with a mouse in his cupboard.
- Improbable Weapon User: Laura mentions Brittas getting attacked by a lady with a frozen chicken after he told her that she had too much hair on her upper lip.
- Interspecies Friendship: Ben ends up becoming friends with a mouse that had made it into his cupboard, much to Carole's horror.
- A Lesson Learned Too Well: Laura tries to teach Brittas about the importance of subtext, which seems to work when he figures out, with her help, that Helen didn't want his gift after all. Then he starts thinking that subtext applies to literally every conversation, ending with him asking the stonemason if he doesn't like his work because it's not for the intelligent.
- Name One: When Laura tells Brittas about how he doesn't listen properly, one of the things she says is that it leads to him upsetting his wife Helen. Brittas asks her to name one time that he has done so, which prompts Laura to bring up how he bought her a moped that Helen didn't want last episode.
- Never My Fault: Brittas attributes the fights in the centre to Sick Building Syndrome and gets a specialist to look into it, with the thought never occurring to him that he is the cause of the fighting.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Brittas accidentally destroys Graham's prized pen and personal computer.
- Nice Mice: A mouse makes it into Ben's cupboard and strikes up a friendship with him, much to Carole's despair.
- Noodle Incident: When Brittas is evacuating the centre, Laura asks if it's another fire.
- Obligatory Joke: Brittas gets his feet stuck in concrete. Naturally, and much to Brittas' annoyance, this leads to the expected feet jokes.Mr. Brittas: Julie, I realise to some people they can see the humourous side of this, but I would be grateful if we could dispense with the witticisms about not having a leg to stand on, keeping both feet on the ground...Julie: Putting our best foot forward.
- One-Shot Character: Graham Hanson and Mrs. Bert-Kennedy.
- Priceless Ming Vase: Brittas ends up destroying Hanson's pen (which was a treasured gift from his grandparent) and his computer (which he spent several weeks programming).
- Raised by Wolves: Julie and Gavin joke about Ben being raised by mice.Julie: Perhaps he'll grow up like Mowgli.Gavin: Thinking his real parents are mice.Julie: He could learn their language.Gavin: The secret ways of the skirting board!
- Rodent Cellmates: Ben becomes friends with a mouse, much to Carole's horror. It is even suggested that the reason why Ben became friends with the mouse is that, having to spend much of his time playing in a cupboard whilst Carole works behind reception, he is probably in desperate need of company.
- Sarcasm-Blind: Apparently, even the idea that someone might mean something different from what they’re saying (subtext) is completely alien to Brittas. Laura tries to teach him this, but it doesn’t properly sink in for him.
- Shout-Out:
- Brittas mentions hearing about Sick Building Syndrome through an article in Mail on Sunday.
- Julie suggests that Ben will grow up to be like Mowgli in The Jungle Book.
- Trauma Conga Line: Hanson gets his prized pen and computer destroyed, gets run over by the sack truck Colin is moving Brittas around in, and is finally knocked unconscious by a falling woman.
- Visible Boom Mic: A boom mic can be seen very briefly during the scene where Laura introduces herself to Hanson.
- What Happened to the Mouse?:
- A literal example comes with the mouse in Ben's cupboard, which is never mentioned again despite presumably still living in the cupboard at the end of the episode.
- Despite Brittas mentioning to Helen about taking her moped down to the garage and exchanging it for a car, later episodes still show Helen driving said moped.
