In this second episode, Gurney ponders the delicate nature of relationships.  We open at a deserted airfield which quickly becomes (in his mind at least) a dance-hall.  He desperately wants to meet the right woman – but even if he did, what would he say?

He couldn’t just go up to her and ask her out, as they have to be introduced first – preferably at a nice cocktail party.  He then spies a gorgeous young girl (Anneke Wills, credited here as Annika Wills) and he eventually plucks up the courage to ask her to dance.  Except, interestingly he doesn’t.  Up until the point they start dancing, they don’t exchange a single word (although the audience has been privy to their, sometimes overlapping, thoughts).  And is she the love of his life?  After the dance she rejoins her friend and then exits from the story, so it doesn’t seem so.  Gurney mournfully considers that “you get nowhere if you don’t talk to them and yet you get the brush off if you do.”

This whole sequence shines a light on the rather repressed morals of late fifties and early sixties Britain.  But the irony is that Anthony Newley suffered from no such repression himself.  He enjoyed a well-deserved reputation as a womaniser – witness his relationship with Wills, which blossomed after the recording of this episode.  It led first to an abortion and then later to the birth of their daughter, Polly, in 1962 (which occurred at the time that Newley was considering ending his marriage to Ann Lynn so he could marry Joan Collins).

So if you know Newley’s history, it does give these scenes an extra frisson.  And it’s clear that the camera loves Wills’ delicate beauty and their bizarre (largely unspoken) meeting is all the more memorable for taking place in the middle of a desolate airfield.

The theme of love continues with the next sequence as Gurney meets a typical family – father, mother and three children.  He asks the husband, Frank (Edwin Richfield), if he feels that he married the right woman.  Or did he just marry the woman next door, the one he was expected to?  As with the airfield scene, this gently mocks the accepted values of the day.  As the sixties progressed, many things (including relationships) would change and become much more flexible (in a way that would have seemed unthinkable to most people in 1960). Again, this seems to foreshadow Newley’s own restless jump from one woman to another.  How much of Gurney Slade is actually Anthony Newley is an interesting, and unknowable, question.

After thinking it over, Frank decides that yes, he didn’t marry the love of his life – so he sets out to find her.  His wife doesn’t seem too concerned (plenty more fish in the sea) and she exits as well. This leaves Gurney with the children – a boy and girl (both aged about eight) and a baby in a pram.  Even for a series with such a tenuous grip on reality, it’s a little jarring to see the children abandoned.  But Gurney doesn’t seem to mind and he starts a lively conversation with the baby (who seems to be incredibly articulate for an infant).  He still believes in Santa Claus and fairies though – though Gurney tells him that there are no such things.

In the world of Gurney Slade, anything can happen – and a real-life fairy (Hugh Paddick) appears and grants them a wish.  This transports them to a rubbish tip which is strewn with parts of female mannequins.  He suggests to the children that they select the best parts and make a mother.  There’s something rather creepy about this – the stark black and white photography definitely helps to create a vague sense of unease.

In the end though, all is well as the children are reunited with their mother and father.  So what was the moral of the story?  Gurney ends by spouting a deliberately nonsensical series of proverbs, so we can assume that the story had no meaning.  Frank didn’t find his ideal woman and he seems happy to settle for the one he has.  And Gurney’s back in his imaginary dance-hall, looking for another woman to trip the light fantastic with.