A Little Bit of Give & Take  

One episode of Minder has never been shown on national television. Produced in 1986 and just 28 minutes in length,
 A Little Bit Of Give & Take was a one-off special intended for UK school children to learn about the dangers of taking drugs.

This episode was sent to schools and health authorities as part of a video package called Double Take.

 It covers how young people might react to situations when they are offered drugs and how they might cope with overcoming this. This is possibly the most unusual episode of Minder especially at it only features a very short scene where Arthur and Terry are together. Thanks to fellow fan Remy Hunter, this page provides you with an insight to the episode and the schools package on this page.

DOUBLE TAKE PACKAGE:
The package (similar in size to a spoken word book, though thicker) contained a VHS or BETAMAX tape, various teaching materials including a 25 page script to the episode, a poster with stills (also from the episode) - this includes one of Terry with his boxing gloves on and many activity sheets with poor illustrations of the cast.

PART 1:
Teenager Shaun, arrives in London looking for his aunt and uncle only to find them away. Shaun's cousin Tim is not interested in him. Shaun then looks for Arthur Daley, an old friend of his father looking for somewhere to stay. Arthur lumbers Terry with Shaun while Arthur goes off on holiday with er' indoors to Jesolo (which Arthur refers to as the 'Oyster of the Adriatic'). Terry chats with Shaun about the dangers of drugs and about choice. Terry drops Shaun off at a party organised by Shaun's cousin.

PART 2:
The whole of part two at the party features obvious messages and scenarios involving drugs and alcohol.

PART 3:
Arthur's back from holiday and chats to Dave about his latest business deal - the acquiring of antique ceramics from Shaun's cousin which turns out to be stolen merchandise to fuel Tim's drug habit.
There are some more messages about drugs. Terry speaks to Arthur who has second thoughts about fuelling a habit.

END:
 Theme tune over credits (black background and not black and white stills).

This episode shows Arthur in a cream/beige suit with matching hat, rarely seen in the whole series. It starred young actor Chris Routh, who was happy to talk to this site about the episode back in 2004.

 You can read the Christopher Routh Interview on our Interviews with Cast & Crew page.

Teaching Materials & Evaluation Book

A sample of some of the material contained within the schools pack is shown here on the left, though you can download more excerpts, including parts of the script, activity sheets (including interesting portraits of Arthur and Terry) for sampling only by clicking here (1.08Mb zip file). In 1988, Christine Eiser and J. Richard Eiser from the Department of Psychology at Exeter University, released a book investigating how successful the anti-drugs campaign had been entitled 'Drug Education In Schools - An Evaluation of the "Double Take" video package ISBN 0-387-96792-3/ISBN 3-540-96792-3, shown here on the right - including trials in schools of how successful this campaign had been.

   

 

Although this episode has never been shown on British TV, it finally saw the light of day in 2006, when it featured as part of the series 6 DVD release of the Minder series by Umbrella Entertainment in Australia. Sadly, apart from its original VHS and Betamax release to schools in 1986, it has still not been released on any UK DVD release of the series.

   

Last updated : 8th November 2012 by jno

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