People are going crazy everywhere, and everyone knows everyone!  Can it be the leaded gas, or the constraints of 1970’s television?  Simon and Eugene discuss Waiting for a Knighthood.

Episode Synopsis:

A vicar is giving a sermon.  It’s a bizarre rambling assemblage of incoherent thoughts.  But it’s not just scripture, it’s other incoherent thoughts, and then the vicar collapses.  In the pews that day, Dr. Anne Tarrant.

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Weeks later, Dr. Quist is relaxing on a Sunday afternoon at Anne Tarrant’s cottage, the vicar’s wife shows up to update Anne on the vicar’s condition.  He had lead poisoning, of all things!  She takes a few jabs at Dr. Quist’s atheism and makes some commentary on declining church attendance.  Quist shocks her when he reveals he practically lives with Anne now.  Anne lets her off her shocked horse by letting her in on a secret.  Quist and Tarrant are married, but Tarrant has kept her maiden name.

Back at Doomwatch’s super-duper new high-tech headquarters, Quist puts Bradley on looking into how the Vicar got lead poisoning.

In the Minister’s office, his inside man in Doomwatch, Neil Stafford is playing politics.  He’s warning the minister that having two insiders in Doomwatch is counterproductive.

Bradley and Barbara’s investigation turns up that the vicar was always renovating cars – a passion of his – and not only did he strip the parts in high-octane leaded gas, but the ground near his garage is highly contaminated with lead from the exhaust fumes.

You know, John Ridge used to tinker with high performance cars, maybe he had lead poisoning, too?  Quist hopes to get Ridge out of the nuthatch, where he is being held after attempting to kill millions of people, so the team investigate the lead angle, while Anne evaluates his current mental state.

During the investigation, at Ridge’s rented mews, Bradly and Stafford meet Ridge’s landlady’s maid, who keeps an eye on the place.  She learns from them that Ridge is in a sanatorium.

Meanwhile, Richard Massingham, industry tycoon, is wining and dining his old friend the Minister.  He wants him to understand, fully, that the car industry is vulnerable.  If they want to make cheaper and better cars, and sell more cars, they need lead to remain in petrol.  Those over-zealous Europeans have started to ban leaded petrol and even the American’s have fallen for this hysteria – just because the air in Los Angeles is bad.

Later Massingham’s son is kidnapped.  Clues lead the police to a rich lady in the country – one of the stockholders in Massingham’s company.  Yes, she and her driver and his wife, her maid, saw the boy but they didn’t see anything suspicious happening.

Stafford visits Ridge on Quist’s orders to evaluate him and who should turn up at the same time to visit Ridge?  The rich woman’s driver – or I should say, Ridge’s landlord’s driver – or more specifically, Ridge’s landlord’s maid’s husband.  She – the maid – is the kidnapper and he’s gone to Ridge for help.  Ridge, still incarcerated gives the info to Stafford.

It seems the maid’s son died of lead poisoning, which she now believes is auto-industry’s fault, so she has kidnapped Massingham’s son, who is about the same age.  What are her intentions?  Revenge killing? A mentally-unstable plot to replace her son with another child.  It’s never really clear.  Could she be suffering from lead poisoning, too?  Doomwatch look into that angle.

Massingham wants the minister to publish something in all the papers saying lead in petrol is safe so the woman will release the boy, but the minister, while a political animal, does seem to understand that lead really is bad and demures at the idea.  He does reveal that Doomwatch’s investigation into the kidnapping reveal that the maid’s son probably died of lead poisoning from chewing on his collection of old-time lead toy soldiers.  They will be publishing that in the papers, perhaps it will help.

Back at Doomwatch and, as an aside, Stafford points out the other mole in Doomwatch to Bradley and suggests he fire him.  Ridge is also released from the sanatorium and Stafford gives him a ride home.  When Ridge gets there, he discovers the maid has been using his flat to keep the boy prisoner, so all’s well that ends well.

Also, industry makes a pre-emptive marketing strike and announce a 25% reduction in lead in their products.  Quist points out to Anne, a 25% decrease still leaves a massive amount of lead being released into the atmosphere.

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