(Dear IPOATthe Fourth, that a happy ending is altogether unlikely?

[Hullygully]

Or not?

(I love Blackadder. I picture Paggy to be somewhat like Bob - though here, not RL, I hasten to add!)

ahem, Gentlemen! I am sure your carousing has left you all peckish!

Pray follow me for a banquet fit for kings!

Yes, indeed! "tis but a few steps down here, we shall dine right next to the splendid wine cellar, we would not wish for you to have to travel to far for the fine wines you will no doubt desire with this fine repast!

dank and dark? No no, 'tis romance personified! And offers a little naughty je ne sais quoi when it comes to , ahem, grown up games!

Quick, Gibbon, quick, they are all in the cellar, lock the door so they mayn't escape!

Wait wait! I am in here too, don't leave me all alone and unprotected with such a raffish group of manly libertines.

Pushes Mr & Mrs Ploppy into the cellar and hastily locks the door.

(The clip still has me in tears)

see the splendour your loving wives have prepared for you!

one turn of the key and we are free, I tell you, free!

Well, gentlemen, tis only little I and all of you. I trust you will not use a maiden roughly?

No you're not, you strumpet! Get out, hist away.

demoulin guards the reprobate husbands

But I thought we were all staying down here to see them punished? I meant Gibbon to shut the door from the inside!

I had this outfit made especially!

Erm...oh dear...it seems I have locked everyone in the cellar....oh my

traitors to our sex, the pair of you! Richly do you deserve the unending task of servicing these poor specimens of mankind!

Humph.

Hully and the Widow entirely forget their dignity

Have it!

They are all manacled, Hully, you can only utilise one at a time anyway!

All for one, ladies, and one for all. Although in this case we have quite a lot for all. Malmsey, anyone? We may as well be convivial ere the punishing begins.

Hully and the Widow deal with Avon

Returns to the kitchen despairing of Hully and Umami...

my, dear Sheik, are you all alone?

Where am I?..Oh my Lord what debauchery do I see before me?

But on reflection Mimi is right. Tis just so hard to think with what we are to fill our empty lives if not in wifehood. With what else might we employ ourselves? A woman's very lot and destiny is the holy state of matrimony, I confess I find myself bereft of alternatives.

Gibbon rejects the Ambassadors peace treaty