IMPORTANT: This review contains SPOILERS. Massive great honking ones. If you haven’t ever seen Press Gang (Seriously?! Are you a KD?!!!  What are you even doing here reading this, you fool?! Click right on over to Amazon, buy yourself the complete series boxset and remedy that situation immediately before you read any further…) #CommissionsEarned

So, how come the newsroom is full of pigeons, and Colin’s carrying an umbrella? It’s elementary, my dear Jackson…

As a Press Gang fan, I’ve unfortunately developed a blindspot for certain episodes over the years… and any random episode rewatch certainly isn’t going to see me eagerly navigating to Money, Love & Birdseed on the DVD menu. (Hmm… let me see, shall I watch that one with the stolen money and the sodding pigeons (yawn), or shall I skip straight to the angsty teenager shotgun suicide…? No contest. But I am getting ahead of myself.) Anyhow, as a consequence, Money Love & Birdseed remains one of my least-watched Press Gang episodes, and since I didn’t even get this far in the ill-fated 20th anniversary rewatch-n-blog, it had been at least eight years since my last viewing. In the interim of course, DaBoss has given the world Sherlock, and perhaps this explains why I have only now, rather belatedly, realised exactly who Billy Homer really is.

We are given our first clue on page 6 (aka Interface). Billy’s first work for the Junior Gazette is a TV review of a Ruth Rendell detective show and demands the presence of Miss Marple… but we must now assume that he merely wished to point out how slow and dull-witted the old lady was. Because Billy Homer is no slouch when it comes to deductive reasoning. His contribution to the Michael Eliot investigation in How To Make a Killing is crucial – and he gently nudges Kenny towards the truth, something that he has obviously already worked out for himself. Whilst Kenny ultimately gets the glory (and the girl, at least for a while), Billy is happy to take a backseat. However, it quickly becomes apparent in Money, Love & Birdseed that Billy really rather enjoys his moments of intellectual superiority, and he candidly admits as much. When Lynda forces him to team up with Sarah in order to learn the truth about Bobby Tweed, Sherlock Homer meets his Watson. So despite the fact that Billy is smug, self-satisfied and decidedly patronising in this episode, somehow his behaviour isn’t entirely objectionable (although if I had been Sarah, I might well have been tempted to belt him in the chops…) Perhaps I am just more amenable to arrogance and self-serving aggrandisement in consulting detectives than I used to be?  In the event, Billy manages to string out the investigation for an entire week, and goodness only knows what has become of Bobby Tweed in the meantime, given the violent tendencies of his father, and his bizarre absence from the Agatha Christie-style denouement, when Mr Homer finally deigns to allow the truth to come out. Sherlock Homer and the Mysterious Case of the Missing Tenners is solved, and we learn never to trust the testimony of a PE teacher or boys who wear pink t-shirts or sunglasses indoors. But what of the sodding pigeons? Where did they all come from, and what have they got against Colin? Presumably, the pigeons can sense his animosity, and are making him pay for his less-than-warm attitude to wildlife. Colin has his revenge however, having demonstrated a surprising level of practicality in dealing with the issue, though he surely got Frazz to do the roof patching part. There is something in his demeanour that suggests a less-than-entirely-happy fate for all those fat little unconscious feathery bodies… Anyone else sensing that pigeon pie will be on the menu at various Norbridge eateries for the next few weeks?!? And so now let us address the elephant in the room. Because it is all too easy to forget that this episode not only features the stolen money and the sodding pigeons, but also reveals a fascinating and unprecedented aspect of Lynda Day. We’ve already been shown Spike’s bedroom (Interface), and now we get to see where Lynda rests her weary head. But it is not just her bedroom we get to peek in to – we also get a good look inside her head. And it’s fair to say at this point, Lynda appears to be pretty obsessed with Spike Thomson. DaBoss made a far more traditional use of the dream sequence last week in Both Sides of the Paper, with Sarah’s exam nightmares, but what he does here with Lynda elevates the narrative to a whole new level.  Lynda is dreaming about Spike, caught in a long-running battle with herself to resist Spike’s undeniable charms… and when she awakes, it is with a “Damn!”  (which is incidentally a good name for an illicit school magazine…) Subsequently, her thoughts leap somewhat inevitably to the short American with the big lips when she learns a boy is waiting for her downstairs.

Lynda’s bedroom displays a rather endearing lack of sophistication (that bedspread should be chucked on a bonfire, although on the plus side, it does match every single item in her wardrobe…), and her prudish nature quickly kicks in. It’s a good job it is actually Bobby Tweed in the kitchen and not Spike – the frumpy dressing gown and teddy bear pyjamas are hardly going to set him aflame – but Lynda’s disappointment is plain. And what of her dreams themselves? Perhaps unsurprisingly, they are only marginally divorced from reality, although her desk is possibly a bit tidier in her head than in real life.  But – ooh look! – there’s the Trivial Pursuit(s) board propped up behind her desk to remind her – subconsciously! – of the last time she was in Spike’s bedroom. And a Garfield settled comfortably on the radiator in a nod to cosy domestic bliss. If only they could just stop shouting at each other… As if Lynda’s errant subconscious wasn’t enough to contend with, out in the real world Tiddler has donned her cupid outfit and is trying to shoehorn Spike and Lynda together on a date. Since it is patently obvious that Tiddler fancies Spike herself, one has to wonder at her motivation… Is she hoping that Lynda will get him fully house-trained then dump him, so she can swoop in and grab him on the rebound?  Tiddler’s lies are ridiculously transparent, but both Spike and Lynda allow themselves to be taken in, even though ultimately they cannot overcome their astonishing talent for full-on, stand-up slanging matches. That said, if Spike truly did run a pair of knickers up the flagpole at the school sports day, you do have to seriously question if he is the right man for anyone. (Also, questions: the school *has* a flagpole?!  And did Betty Hunter fall through a hole in time from the 1950s?)

The course of true vole never did run smooth, and ultimately the only winner is The Pavillion, which sells four unused tickets to see The Dreadnoughts. In conclusion then, Sherlock Homer should have had his own series, and Tiddler needs to review her tactics.  The real message is obvious, as the closing credits voice-over makes crystal clear: forget about the Money and the Birdseed, this one is all about the Love.