Victor accidentally kidnaps a businessman's mother. There is a mix-up over a holiday cottage, Victor buys a haunted caravan, and Margaret has a heart attack.

Victor goes shopping for an answering machine and ends up being collared to assist with a police identity parade for a flasher. When he actually does make it home, the device doesn't work, which only exacerbates Margaret's frustration over a rickety old caravan he's recently bought; and her temper is riled further when Mr. Swainey informs them it is supposed to be haunted!

Meanwhile, Victor reluctantly lends Swainey's old age charity a hand by picking up an elderly Indian lady from the airport, but her poor English ends with an unwitting hostage situation...

The Meldrews go to visit Derek and Betty, their new next-door neighbours, for dinner, where they find Patrick has left collection of horror stories in warning of Victor's antics - the stories defy belief, of course. The newcomers are going away to a holiday cottage for a few days, and as Betty attempts to recommend the rental company to Margaret, a booking confusion sows the seeds for quite the shock.

At the end of her tether over the latest of Victor's mishaps, Margaret refuses to join him for a get-away by the coast in the new caravan. After a strange night's sleep and a disturbing dream about Margaret he takes her earlier advice and attempts to ditch it off the edge of a cliff, but succeeds only in destroying their car instead.

Returning home, however, he is met with news that puts all of their holidaying woes into stark perspective.