Is There Honey Still for Tea?

Infobox Dad's Army
episode_number episode_name=069 - Is There Honey Still for Tea?
script=Jimmy Perry and David Croft
director=David Croft
producer=David Croft
recorded=26/6/1975
original_transmission=19/9/1975
series=Eight
length=30 minutes
viewing_figures=
preceding=When You've Got to Go
following=Come in, Your Time is Up

"Is There Honey Still for Tea?" is the third episode of the eighth British comedy series "Dad's Army" that was originally transmitted on Wednesday 19 September 1975. The title is taken from the concluding line of Rupert Brooke's 1912 poem, "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester":

"Stands the Church clock at ten to three?""And is there honey still for tea?"

ynopsis

Private Godfrey's Cherry Tree Cottage is set to be flattened to make way for a new aerodrome. Frazer, however, champions his cause. He knows the minister responsible for the plan, and he knows his father, and he knows about an incident in the draper's shop...

Plot

The episode opens with Mainwaring keenly anticipating the arrival of his new office door (the last having been destroyed by bomb damage). He is disappointed, however, to discover the replacement is made out of paper. Various misfortunes occur to it, leaving the door in ruins in a matter of minutes.

The Colonel informs them that Private Godfrey's cottage is to be flattened to make way for a new aerodrome. Mainwaring summons Jones and Fraser to the bank and tries to work out how best to break the news to Godfrey. Mainwaring resolves to go and inform Godfrey personally. He, Pike and Wilson walk out to pay a call to Cherry Tree Cottage, only to be invited to stay for tea. During the visit Mainwaring repeatedly puts off telling Godfrey, and finally tries to shift the responsibility, and make Wilson tell him - a job his Sergeant shirks. The three of them depart the cottage, with Godfrey seemingly none the wiser about his fate. Next Mainwaring tries to persuade Jones and Fraser to do the deed as the two oldest members of the platoon. Fraser abandons Jones, leaving him to tell Godfrey alone. Slightly awkwardly, Jones begins a rambling and convoluted explanation - only to find that Godfrey already knows, having received official notification several days before. He innocuously mentions that he meant to tell Captain Mainwaring, but he didn't want to "upset him". Jones offers to let Godfrey stay with him, which he accepts.

When Fraser makes a call to the home of the Minister in charge of building the new aerodrome Sir Charles Renthrew McCallister, in the middle of the night - and subtly threatens him with exposure, for his youthful transgressions, if he does not re-consider the scheme.

The next scene shows the platoon helping to load the furniture in Hodge's van as he prepares to move out, with a melancholic Godfrey and his sisters watching as their possessions being carried away. Fraser arrives, bearing news of the official decision to shift the aerodrome several hundred yards, meaning that Godfrey's cottage will now be on the edge of it rather than in the middle. The platoon respond with delight, leaving an irate Hodges, shaking his fist and calling Mainwaring a chiseler.

The episode ends with a tea party at Godfrey's cottage, in which he thanks Mainwaring for saving his house unaware, as they all are, that it was in fact Fraser who had come through for Godfrey. In the final scene the tea party which is being held on the lawn of Godfrey's cottage is interrupted by a plane which has just taken off from the aerodrome, flying over the cottage at very low level and blowing everyone and everything around the garden.

Notes

* Pike references two films in this episode The Ghost Goes West (1938) in which an American millionare transports a castle from Scotland to California, and Dangerous Moonlight (1941) about anti-Nazi activity in Poland.

Cast