'Victim As Black' by Edward Boyd

The arrival of Queen Helena of Morphonia as a guest of Her Majesty’s government sends Kronk of the M.O.D.’s Department K into a panic; knowing that the monarch is a notorious shoplifter, Kronk sends Inspector Blood and Sergeant Hound to keep track of her. Meanwhile, Helena tells her friend, Syrie Van Epp that she has come to Britain to search for her son, King Ferdinand XVIII of Morphania, who has become infatuated with a girl; Syri promptly recommends detective Phil Scrotty as someone who can help track down the rogue royal. Scrotty receives a visit from two thugs, who carry him off just as the camp but bitter racialist Theobald Aboo, president of the International Brotherhood of Emergent Africans, arrives in the office. When Helena subsequently turns up, she mistakes Aboo for Scrotti, and asks him to track down the girl her son has fallen for; Aboo is astonished to see that the black girl in the photograph Helena has given him is his friend’s daughter – who cannot possibly be allowed to marry a white man. A manhandled Scrotty is brought before his new client: none other than King Ferdinand of Morphania, who wants him to locate a girl he has become infatuated with so that he can wed her; unfortunately, all the king has to go on is a shoe that the girl left behind. Elsewhere, the girl in question, an usherette named Pearl, carries on her humdrum life, unaware of the racist furore that she has unwittingly caused…

Gary Cockrell (Phil Scrotty), John Sharp (Kronk), Elizabeth Shepherd (Syrie Van Epp), Alan Curtis (Inspector Blood), William Maxwell (Sergeant Hound), William Trigger (Nonesuch), Elizabeth Shepherd (Syrie Van Epp), John Sharp (Kronk), Gary Cockrell (Phil Scrotty), Marian Spencer (Queen Helena of Morphonia), Alan Curtis (Inspector Blood), William Maxwell (Sergeant Hound), Calvin Lockhart (Theobald Aboo), Roger Hammond (King Ferdinand of Morphania), Nina Baden-Spencer (Pearl), Pauline Collins (Syrie’s Maid), Peter Staples (Head of Department One), Desmond Braden (Head of Department Eight), Brian Stone (Head of Department Fourteen), Peter Jesson (First Mr Grimm), Mark Hardy (Second Mr Grimm), Bertie Green (First Negro), Paul Wynter (Second Negro), Malcolm Douglas (Assassin), Sheila Whittingham (First Nurse), Susan Foster (Second Nurse)

Directed by David Boisseau
Produced by Richard Everitt

TX (Granada):
16th September 1966 @ 9.40 pm

Notes:
*Featuring Syrie Van Epp, Phil Scrotty, Kronk, Inspector Blood and Sergeant Hound