Episode 2 Road to Nowhere Ep2 - Completed
After a brush with a porn film shoot goes wrong for Paddy, the campervan breaks down in the Midlands. The pair hand it over to a local garage run by Mick Bustin, played by British rocker Noddy Holder. To kill time, Max and Paddy go for a walk in the woods, but quickly become lost. After Max shows Paddy his notebook filled with drawings of a
televison programme he's invented called "Magnet and Steel", the pair reluctantly decide to sleep rough in the woods. Paddy quickly causes ill feeling by burning Max's book on the campfire they've started, but Max soon comes
around and begins talking, through a flashback, about his one true love: a midget called Tina, who he met in 1994. He goes on to say that the relationship abruptly ended after she overheard him and his friends making jokes about her height. The following morning, after Mick Bustin tries to charge them £500 to retrieve the campervan, they break
into Bustin's workshop and, in a parody of The_A-Team, modify the van and 'bust' out back on to the road. This episode features several regulars from
Peter Kay's Phoenix Nights, and a homage to the movie Midnight Cowboy.We also find out here that Paddy's full name is Patrick O'Shea.
The pair now go to London. Max spots in a local newspaper a 40th birthday message for his old schoolfriend Kevin 'The Wolfster' Wolfson, who had moved to London some years before. Max and Paddy turn up unannounced at his birthday party and surprise 'The Wolfster', as well as several other old faces present for the party. Things turn sad
though when Tina, Max's one true love mentioned in the previous episode, turns up. Max awkwardly talks to her, and things get even worse when he realises that she is actually married to, and has a child with, The Wolfster.However, it soon comes out that the child, a 10 year old boy called Daniel, is actually Max's. Tina warns Max to stay
away and not blow the secret, but the following morning he ropes Paddy in and the pair steal what they think is a school bus with young Daniel aboard. They've got the wrong bus however, and are soon accosted by the police and sent directly to prison. The actor/comedian Reece Shearsmith turns up in this episode as one of Max's old friends.
The 'Row Row Row Your Boat' sequence on the bus is borrowed from Dirty Harry, and in the scene where The Wolfster writes his telephone number on a beermat and hands it to Max, it is clearly a Peter Kay beermat, tying in with Kay's TV adverts for John Smith's bitter.
The pair are now in prison after the school bus incident. Paddy is forced to share a cell with a Cliff Richard impersonator who actually believes he
is Cliff. After an uncomfortable first night, Paddy admits his fear of being 'bummed' in the shower room. Max convinces him the best thing to do is make the other prisoners believe they are not just silly doormen, but two genuine big-league gangsters called 'The Phoenix Twins'. After an altercation with a camp inmate called Pepe, Max and Paddy are soon confronted by the main man of their wing, Raymond The Bastard, who is also Pepe's boyfriend. Raymond has heard about the pair's alleged big-money heists and robberies, and wants a cut of their money. Max agrees just to get Raymond off their backs and receive preferential treatment. Soon, their old Pheonix Club boss Brian Potter (played by Kay) comes to visit, announcing that he's organising several events to help speed up their release. They spurn him, not wanting a high profile campaign ruining their chances. Potter, as ever, fails to listen, and the whole wing see him on the TV news talking about 'the doormen
Max and Paddy, thus showing up their tall stories as lies. The episode concludes with Tina, Max's ex-love, admitting to the authorities that Daniel is actually Max's son and he was acting under stress when he stole the bus. The pair are pardoned and get revenge on Brian Potter by informing the Home Office that he has biological weapons at his club. We find out in this episode that Max's name is Maxwell Bygraves, a reference to the veteran
British entertainer Max Bygraves.
In the countryside, Paddy is driving the van when he accidentally knocks over and kills a cow. Tracing the cow to a nearby farm, the pair go off to find the farmer and claim expenses for the damage to the van. They come across what they assume is him: an odd old man in a field, who instead of giving them money sells them a breeder pig for
£100. He claims they can sell it on at market for around £300. When Max and Paddy reach the cattle market, they discover the pig has seen better days and they've been conned. After several unsuccessful attempts to sell the pig on to butchers shops and even a Halal outlet, Max and Paddy decide to kill it themselves to get rid of the burden.
They have a change of heart though and head back to the farm to reclaim their £100. They soon discover that the old man who sold them the pig initially was actually the drunk father-in-law of the real farmer, and their money has probably all gone to the nearest pub.
Max and Paddy finally hit Newcastle-upon-Tyne to visit Max's old doorman friend Billy 'The Butcher' Shannon, who had previously appeared in the 1994 flashback in Episode 3. They agree to let Shannon, who is looking for his estranged son, hitch a ride around. They soon discover though that he's obsessed with Max ("Not in a gay way" he
claims), and irrationally hates Paddy. What they fail to notice at the same time is that Shannon is carrying a shotgun, which he uses to force a motorway cafe to open for the trio late at night. The police are quickly on to the gang, with only Shannon aware of any crime. When the campervan stops off at another service station down the road, Max sees a newspaper headline and realises what's happening.
A chase eventually ensues through the services and along a motorway tunnel bridge, and Shannon shoots Paddy in the bottom. He's on the verge of firing at Max too, but Paddy quickly recovers, and bashes Shannon around the head with a traffic cone, using Peter Kay's TV catchphrase of "'Ave It!" in the process. With Shannon now unconscious and arrested, Max and Paddy slip away from a police telling-off and escape into the night in the van.
