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 about the dangers of drugs.

This was sent to schools and health authorities as part of a 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.  Without doubt, the rarest Minder episode around, thanks to fellow fan Remy Hunter, we can provide 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) contains a 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 the 'really bad' illustrations of the cast.

PART 1:
Teenager Shaun, arrives in London looking for his aunt and uncle only to find them away. 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. 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:
Whole of part two at party with 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 his drug habit (Shaun's cousin, not Arthur's!). More messages about drugs.

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 - be sure to read the Christopher Routh Interview on this site! (see left menu)

TEACHING MATERIALS
A sample of some of the material contained within the schools pack is shown here, 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 k zip file)- by clicking this link you are agreeing to the DISCLAIMER below.

On the whole this 28 minute episode is very good, the best parts being the exchanges between Arthur/Dave and Arthur/Terry. Two of the best:
DAVE: You goin' away then?
ARTHUR: Two weeks in Gisolo, oyster of the Adriatic
ARTHUR: His dad (Shaun's) was good to me.
TERRY: So you look after him then.
ARTHUR: I can't take him to the Costa packet.

Minder.org campaigned for a long time for an official release of this episode and thanks to the great guys from Umbrella DVD down under, we can enjoy this episode at last (see "Buy Minder DVDs" link on the left).

The star of this episode, a young Christopher Routh kindly agreed to be interviewed about this episode by minder.org in May 2004.
 If you would like to read this and more about the background to this episode click here.

This page was created by jno as an informative guide to the former British TV series 'Minder'.
Special Thanks to Remy Hunter, without whom this page would not exist.
This page is optimised for viewing at 1024x768 resolution using Microsoft Internet Explorer.
'Minder' - Created By Leon Griffiths - (C) Leon Griffiths/Thames Television 1979.
Last updated : 6th February 2008

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