A Private Function

Driven by the desperate social ambitions of his wife Joyce (Maggie Smith), one act of folly turned the life of sensitive, small-town chiropodist Gilbert Chivers (Michael Palin) into a nightmare. With Britain in the paranoid grip of Post-War food rationing, Gilbert steals Betty, a contraband pig being secretly fattened by a group of the town's dignitaries for a banquet to celebrate the Other Royal Wedding. But there is a price to be paid for the social leverage provided by the possession of a prize porker. Gilbert's squeamishness, his mother-in-law's senility and old Betty's incontinence lead to the discovery of the double dealing - Gilbert is inexorably caught up in the toils of the Black Market, ending up with blood on his hands and the police on the doorstep!