Goin' South

Tony Whitham lives a quiet life. A good job in the city and a sexy fiancée Sharon, from Essex - though things have been a bit rocky between them lately. That it's 1970s London: demos against Vietnam, Union strikes, growing piles of ever smellier rubbish on the streets, electricity cuts, bodies unburied, a vote on the common market; is hardly noticed. That's love for you. Then he gets caught up in a jewellery robbery. A dead policeman, a dead robber; a bag of stolen diamonds in one hand and a sawn-off in the other; what else can Tony do but run. His lawyer mate Will tries to bring him in safely, Sharon gets mad, and Tony is relentlessly chased by what seems every crook in Britain and a bent copper, determined to avenge his brother, oh, and make a nice little earner on the side. Edinburgh is where Tony gets picked up by Big Ken and his men, but not the diamonds. Brought back to London, his workmate and very good friend Bunty helps him escape. They flee to the Continent in her battered old Mini. Chased across France by police and robbers, Carcassonne is very nice but they don't have time to stop as they're nearly cornered. Across the Pyrenees, through Andorra, into Spain, barely a half step ahead. Tony not only has to share the driving but manage an ever-angrier Sharon and an increasingly attractive Bunty. All in all, it's a tough drive across Spain on Franco's roads in a cramped old Mini. It's not until the Tabernas Desert - where Clint shot those cowboy films - that Tony is finally cornered. No escape! He has to sort it all out now. Sort of.