List of Not Going Out episodes

Kate (Megan Dodds) is trying to make Lee (Lee Mack) choose a career, but when she suggests clown classes, she ends up taking them herself with limited success. Meanwhile, Lee agrees to go on a date with Lucy Moss (Alexandra Gilbreath), a serious and earnest author whose book was published by Kate's company, in an attempt to show Kate his serious side. Tim (Tim Vine) uses Lee's absence to try to make things up with Kate.

First appearances of Lee, Tim and Kate.

Tim's 94-year-old grandmother dies, and when Lee fails to pass this information on to Kate she accuses him of not being in touch with his emotions. He reluctantly agrees to see an expensive therapist (Lorelei King), who soon gets to the root of his problems - his unspoken feelings for Kate. Meanwhile, Kate comforts Tim, who sees fit to hit on her at his grandmother's funeral. Lee comes close to telling Kate how he feels, but instead uses the time to be with his friend.

Kate wants to impress a visiting Australian friend called Ruth (Julia Morris). Ruth has always been successful, and the only advantage Kate has ever had is her long-term relationship with Tim - hence the fact she has never told Ruth that the two of them split up. Kate persuades Lee to pretend to be Tim while Ruth is staying, and things become a little too close for comfort when the pair are forced to share a bed. Tim is horrified by Lee pretending to be him (and all that it implies), and decides that he'll get his own back and stop being a "middle class ponce".

Lee is trying to teach Kate to drive, but her skills - or lack of them - is sending his stress levels through the roof. Kate leads him in a yoga session and, when he fails to take that seriously, sends him to an acupuncturist (Miranda Hart), who he ends up fighting with. While Lee is otherwise occupied, Tim offers his services in teaching Kate how to drive, which turns out to be a lot more successful.

As a last resort to sort out his stress levels, Lee takes prescription tranquillisers, and persuades Kate to drive him and Tim in the countryside. When Tim implies that his affair was Kate's fault, and Kate finds out about Lee's drug-taking, she accelerates and crashes into a tractor. Somehow, she still manages to pass her test.

As a favour to two friends, Kate agrees to take care of their 14-year-old son, Nicky (Rupert Simonian), for a few days while they attend a wedding in the Caribbean. She wants Lee to bond with Nicky, but Lee's efforts get him nowhere; he is even more dismayed when Nicky and Tim discover that they actually have a lot in common. While the boys are bonding, Kate tries to talk Nicky's Great Dane into becoming a vegetarian. Lee's attraction to Kate doesn't pass Nicky by, but he forgets his intentions to spill the beans when Lee allows Nicky's dog to stay in the flat, despite his serious allergy.

Kate is trying to persuade Lee to get a job, and he grudgingly goes to an interview. When he is offered the job - as caretaker in his block of flats - he is unsure whether to take it, as the job comes with accommodation, so he would have to move out. Tim persuades him that he could give up the job after a few weeks, while still having made the point to Kate.

While Kate insists that she is fine on her own, she is clearly missing Lee. Meanwhile, Lee quickly comes to dislike both the job and his demanding supervisor (Adrian Hood), and decides to give up as quickly as he can. However, Tim persuades Kate to look for a new flatmate before Lee can move back in, and she decides to go for it. Kate interviews a prospective new flatmate called Pete (Duncan Duff), but Tim persuades Lee to put him off, worried that Pete is an even bigger threat than Lee was. After Lee tells Pete some horror stories about Kate, he asks Kate if he can move back in - and she is absolutely delighted.

Final appearance of Kate.

With Kate having gone back to America, Tim tells Lee he is going to sell the flat, and hires a cleaner called Barbara (Miranda Hart) to clean it. Lee tries to get a mortgage so he can buy it, and in the meantime he puts off all the potential buyers, until Lucy (Sally Bretton), who unbeknown to Lee is Tim's sister, arrives saying she will rent the spare room when Lee buys it. Lucy soon decides she wants to buy it herself, and both offer to buy it from Tim. They are visited by a man called Hilary Alison (Stewart Francis), and both assume he is interested in the flat. Lee pretends it is "a burgled former asbestos mill" to put him off. Tim decides to sell it to Lee, but he cannot get a mortgage (Hilary was the surveyor) so Lucy buys it. On Tim's wishes, she rents out the spare room to Lee.

Lucy persuades Lee to pretend to be gay after she lies to a business acquaintance, Guy (Simon Dutton), who she was told is gay himself, by telling him she lives with a gay flatmate to prove she is not homophobic. However, Guy soon starts to get suspicious and tests Lee's sexuality by taking him to a gay bar. Later, Guy overhears Lee saying to Tim, who had started to think Lee was gay, that he is not gay. When Lucy then explains to Guy what happened, he reveals he is not gay and he and Lucy kiss.

When Guy's daughter Chloe (Cressida Whyte) gets appendicitis, Lee and Tim are left looking after her baby son Dillon while Guy and Lucy visit her. While in their care, Dillon swallows a subbuteo football and Lee and Tim have problems locating it, and try to think of ways to get it out of his body. However, it later turns out Dillon did not swallow it after all. Lucy is worried about the age gap between her and Guy.

With Guy in Thailand, Lucy has several personal telephone conversations with him. Lee is annoyed by this, but Lucy and Barbara think that he is just jealous because he is not with anyone, and they persuade Lee to go speed dating. At the speed dating Lee meets Daisy (Katy Wix), an extremely indecisive hairdresser. He invites her out for a date and then for a dinner with Lucy at his apartment.

Meanwhile, Tim offends Barbara by calling her 'the help' and invites her out for a drink to make it up to her. The 'date' is unsuccessful and Barbara admits that she only agreed to come out with him because she felt sorry for him - and also to keep him away from what is happening at the flat. Tim goes back to the flat and meets Daisy, and they immediately hit it off. After the dinner Daisy dumps Lee and goes home with Tim.

Guy is taking Lucy on a surprise holiday, and buys her lots of expensive - and revealing - clothes. Lee gets suspicious when a suspect package is delivered to Guy, and assumes that Guy is a gangster. However, when confronted, Guy claims it was only his passport. Lee and Tim break into Guy's office and discover several precious stones - presumably diamonds - in the package. Guy admits that it wasn't a passport he had delivered, but claims that the 'diamonds' are actually sapphires which he was making into a necklace for Lucy. Still suspicious, Lee steals one and has it valued, confirming that it is a diamond.

The surprise holiday is revealed to be to Sicily. When Guy and Lucy go to the airport, Barbara warns Lee and Tim that Sicily is famous for gangsters, and that Guy is using Lucy to smuggle the diamonds abroad. Lee and Tim run to the airport and confront Guy, but he explains that the sapphires are real, and that the diamond is the only one - and has been made into an engagement ring. Guy asks Lucy to marry him, but Lee asks her to say no - he may not be a gangster, but he is still not right for her. Lee returns to the flat alone, but Lucy later returns, saying she refused Guy as he was too controlling, and their relationship is over.

When Lucy announces to Lee that she is pregnant, he wonders if the father might accidentally be him. However, he can't bring himself to tell Lucy how he thinks it might have happened but Tim guesses. He is infuriated at the thought of his friend and his sister together but Lee has started to warm to the idea of being a dad...

Daisy is absent from this episode.

Lee wins £1000 in a writing competition with an essay entitled 'Disability in the Workplace', and spends the money on a set of football mugs. Lucy finds herself moved to tears when she reads the essay, as she had no idea that Lee was so sensitive. However, Lee admits to Tim that he actually downloaded the essay off the internet, and, as the competition was only open to disabled people, he is pretending to be blind.

Meanwhile, Tim crashes his car after driving through a red light, and Lee persuades him to pretend the light was green so that he can claim insurance, volunteering himself as a witness. When a journalist, Dawn (Rebecca Gethings), turns up to interview Lee, she is expecting to meet a man in a wheelchair, as Lee accidentally ticked the wrong box. Lee claims that Tim is his brother, and threatens to pull out of the insurance scam if Tim does not go along with it. The con also involves pretending that Daisy has amnesia. All goes well until Lucy arrives home, and Lee pretends that she is their sister and has Tourette Syndrome. Lucy is furious, but grudgingly goes along with it. However, before Dawn leaves, Lucy insists on playing a game that involves breaking all of Lee's mugs.

Over-excited by the appearance of a lesbian couple in their building, Lee and Tim ask them over for dinner, not realising that their adolescent attempt to get their jollies will backfire when Lucy discovers a side to herself that she never knew existed.

When Tim and Lee try to organise a surprise party for Lucy's 30th birthday, their ideas of what makes a good party differ widely. Tim likes a few games of charades while Lee likes a party with no competitors for Lucy's attention. So when Lucy turns up at the party arm-in-arm with another man (Ed Weeks), Lee makes it his mission to get rid of him... without causing a scene, obviously.

A new neighbour (Andy Linden) moves in upstairs and his constant noise drives Lucy to distraction. She begs Lee and Tim to get him to stop but neither of them is man enough. Tim takes the tag of wimp to heart and rushes off to join a boxing gym while Lee, in an attempt to impress Lucy, makes the mistake of confronting the man in his own flat, where he finds a creepy psychopath with the eyes of a cold killer.

Daisy is absent from this episode.

Lucy has an important speech to make at a Recruitment Conference, and when her PA pulls out, Barbara suggests that Lee offer to write it himself. Tim also offers his services, but Lucy clearly likes Lee's style a lot more, and hires him. However, Lee is frustrated when Lucy becomes increasingly demanding of him, asking him to do everything from making her a cup of tea to stamping letters. When she pitches her services to a blackcurrant juice company, Lee invites the representatives (Chandrika Chevli and Julia Watson) to watch Lucy's speech. Lucy is furious, and Lee resigns in a temper.

Tim replaces Lee at writing the speech, but his jokes are not as funny as Lee's. Barbara persuades Lee to ask for his job back, and Lucy grudgingly agrees, and asks Lee and Tim to pick up her dress from the dry-cleaners. Lee and Tim accidentally ruin the dress, and have to buy Lucy a new one. Surprisingly, she likes the new dress, but it is so clingy she has to wear it without underwear. At the speech, Lucy tells all of Lee's jokes wrong, and has to start using the jokes Tim suggested - which surprisingly go down well. However, when she steps out from behind the podium, the bright auditorium lights render her dress see through, and the audience see her without her underwear. She still manages to secure the contract with the blackcurrant company.

Lee is horrified when he hears that Lucy is considering marriage to Pavlov (Aleksander Mikic), a political refugee from the old Eastern bloc who is working as a local mechanic, just so that he can stay in the country. He initially gets Tim, Geoffrey and Wendy on his side, but, as Lucy's family meet Pavlov and hear his tragic tales of life back home, they are each persuaded that he is a perfect match for Lucy.

Lucy and Pavlov plan their wedding, but Lee visits the Home Office to discover the questions that they will ask when inspecting the couple. When he warns Lucy of the cryptic questions she will be asked, she has second thoughts about the wedding. Lee goes to visit Pavlov himself, and Pavlov realises that the idea is bad and agrees to return to his home country. However, Lee comes up with the idea for Barbara to marry Pavlov instead, and the two drive off for their honeymoon in India.

After an unsuccessful Christmas dinner with her parents, Lucy is cross with Lee's behaviour, and Barbara tells him he should make more of an effort with Lucy. Lee arranges a special dinner for them, and it seems to go well, until Lee's estranged father Frank (Bobby Ball) turns up at the flat unannounced, asking to borrow £500. Lee wants him out of the flat but when Frank announces that he is dying, Lucy tells Lee that if he really has changed, he will make an effort to get to know Frank before the inevitable.

Lee offers Frank a day out, and after a visit to a lap-dancing club, Frank takes Lee back to the theme park where he once stole Lee a goldfish, and later ate it. On a roller-coaster, Frank admits that he is not really dying, and soon after leaves the flat, giving Barbara a more emotional farewell than Lee. Lucy admits that Lee was right all along, and they share a brief kiss under the mistletoe.

Final appearance of Barbara.

After a night of "wild partying", Tim returns home from a nightclub wearing the wrong coat. After discovering drugs in the pocket, he omits to a blind panic. When he returned the coat to the wrong person (Frankie McGinty) but the real coat owner sees him with the coat, all hell let loose, and both Tim and Lee try to find drugs to return to the man, while Daisy thinks they are taking drugs after seeing them with the cocaine. They find themselves in a sticky (or meaty...) situation with the rightful owner - a butcher (Dave Sommer).

Debbie (Laura Aikman), an attractive woman in her early twenties, moves into the block and goes to great lengths to get to know Lee. Lee assumes that Debbie fancies him, but is shocked when she reveals that she thinks he is her father, after he had a one-night stand with her late mother Karen (Emma Pike) at a party at Tim's house in the 80s. Lee initially tries to avoid Debbie, but Lucy persuades him to get to know her a bit better. However, Tim reveals that he not only dated Karen, but lost his virginity to her - meaning that he could also be Debbie's father.

Both Lee and Tim are in immediate shock and denial, wondering what it will be like being a father. A DNA test reveals that neither of them is Debbie's father. Debbie is devastated, but Lucy remembers that she was eight years old at the time of the party, and stumbled on Karen in bed with Terry (Paul Vincent Lowe), an unusually short friend of Lee and Tim's. Lee successfully tracks Terry, and he and Debbie meet up.

Lucy is fed up of Lee treating her flat as if he owns it. He promises to change but omits to mention that he has already let the flat out to a film director (Mike Wilmot) who is paying Lee £500 to use the flat while Lucy's out at work. It later turns out the film shooting is for a porno, and Lee tries to get them out of the flat before Lucy returns. Tim finds out, but Lee perusades him it is an action film, causing him to ask for a walk-in part or he'll tell Lucy.(Note: The original BBC broadcast of this episode was edited in two places, presumably to remove more explicit sexual references. The DVD version is complete as can be seen when Lee is knelt down with the boom mic and just before he ends up on the floor with the male lead Rod.)

Lucy and Tim's parents, Geoffrey (Geoffrey Whitehead) and Wendy, are separating. Geoffrey moves into Lucy's flat, banishing Lee to the sofa. To get his room back and avoid being thrown onto the street, Lee must now play Relate Counsellor to patch up the marriage.

An old lady (Vilma Hollingbery) wanders into Lucy's flat and joins Lee on the sofa. When it becomes clear that she doesn't know who she is, Lee throws her out only to discover that she has a rich son who always pays a handsome reward to the person who brings her home, which Lee hopes to use to buy fireworks and impress Lucy. Does she?

Stuck in a coma, with friends and family gathered round his hospital bed, Lee dreams of a perfect life with Lucy. But is it really so perfect and will the reality match up?