'Growth', Originally transmitted BBC2, 15/8/1997

Rab ponders the irony of English rugby fans singing black spirituals and defends the Scottish wearing of woad as an indication of confidence in inevitable defeat. He promply collapses in the pub.

Rab has fallen ill and keeps vomiting. Meanwhile, his friend Jamesie has depression and stays in bed, covered in woad, bemoaning Scottish football defeats. Rab goes to the doctor and tests confirm stomach cancer. He tries to stay upbeat but when he tries to buy a wig after chemotherapy he cannot afford one.

Rab's son, Gash, is hoping to marry his fiancée, Natalie, but when he reveals his wedding plans Rab tells him marriage ruined his life. Indignant, Mary leaves him.

Jamesie's wife Ella is desperate for an affair and drags Mary out to pick up men. They chat up two lorry drivers in the pub. Rab finds them but collapses as he tries to start a fight. Refusing to go to hospital and reunited with Mary, Rab visits Natalie's eccentric father Dan. Dan tells the newlyweds that the world is a veil of hopeless misery and marriage is institutionalised boredom, before Rab collapses again.

Greviously ill in hospital, Rab imagines the devil in a referee's outfit giving him a red card.