Episode 4, 'Message Sent', tx. 27/6/1991

Michael's brother Franky takes their mother for a trip to Fleetwood. Michael asks his researcher to find Franky, who has taken his car without permission, and also to locate Eileen Critchley, a girl he went to school with. Eileen has been leaving phone messages for Michael and he is terrified that she will reveal their secret. Barbara pretends to be Eileen (who is actually her older sister) and tries unsuccessfully to get Michael's confidential school records from Mr Weller. He realises he is being tricked as Eileen died many years before while at university. Barbara arranges with McGuire to have Weller lured away from his house and then to have his files ransacked.

Michael gets Jim suspended from his job and is also arranging to have him expelled from the Labour Party. Jim secretly watches as Peter and a group of thugs undermine the local branch of the Labour Party. The psychological strain makes Jim walk in his sleep and disrobe in front of his children. Weller gives Jim his copy of Michael's records for safekeeping. He tells him that he suppressed the records out of love for Michael's mother.

Michael becomes increasingly agitated as he waits at a hotel to have a meeting with Mervyn and other Trotskyite agitators. Michael's aide Teddy is spying on him and reporting to Leo and Peter, who are also manipulating Mervyn. Peter humiliates Michael by telling him he won't be needed at the meeting.

Jim and his wife read Michael's file and feel great sympathy for him due to his troubled childhood. Barbara is in league with Peter and Leo and has been planning Michael's downfall. As his school files have gone missing, they decide that Barbara must help calm Michael down until they can produce the evidence of his childhood indiscretions at the most opportune moment for maximum effect.

The hotel is filled to the brim with people from a Doctor Who convention. Barbara finds Michael panicking in the lobby and calms him down by offering to go to bed with him. Michael after much searching is able to obtain some condoms and is eventually able to elude his wife with the help of a black waiter. Michael gives the waiter a huge tip and eventually he sleeps with Barbara. Peter and his gang of thugs attack the waiter to incite racial hatred in the city.