Christmas Bonus

Episode Overview

Arthur is having trouble as ‘er indoors and the two kids head off on holiday for Christmas while Terry and Dave put the Christmas tree up in the Winchester. When Arthur brings the Christmas lights along he receives a phone call only to discover that little Cyril has sold him the wrong tickets for ‘er indoors – she has actually received stand-by tickets and could be waiting for the next available space for a long time and is ringing the Winchester asking for Arthur. Meanwhile, Terry finds out that the Christmas fairy lights don’t work and when he finally thinks he has fixed them, they blow the power at the Winchester.

This is essentially a clips show with exactly 13 minutes and 13 seconds of new footage filmed only in the Winchester Club set. Clips from the first three series of the show are mixed with this new footage which features only Arthur, Terry and Dave.

Cast

Dennis Waterman as Terry, George Cole as Arthur, Glynn Edwards as Dave

Appearances by: George Baker, John Bardon, John Benfield, Anthony Chin, Pamela Cundell, Anton Darby, Colin Edwynn, Derek Fowlds, Richard Griffiths, Brian Hall, Prentis Hancock, David Hargreaves, Russell Hunter, David Jackson, Roy Kinnear, George Layton, Phil McCall, Bridget McConnell, Lloyd Macguire, Clive Mantle, Jamila Massey, Adrian Mills, Warren O’Neil, Peter Postlethwaite, David Sibley, Gwyneth Strong, Royston Tickner, Anthony Valentine, Wanda Ventham, April Walker, Larrington Walker, Max Wall, Tony Westrope, Gary Whelan

Facts

In this episode we find out Arthur has two children. One very rare scene appears at the end of this episode where we see Arthur, Terry and Dave all smoking a cigar at the bar in the Winchester Club. Never repeated on television since its original transmission in 1983, this episode was finally released on DVD for the first time by Clearvision in 2002. This episode was also transmitted in Canada. This was the only original episode of Minder transmitted in 1983.

Bloopers: Not strictly a blooper, but despite fixing the fairy lights Terry, Arthur and Dave are still sitting in candlelight when they sit at the bar towards the end of the episode despite the lights being on in the previous Winchester scene.