On Leap Day (29 February), Laura decides to use the tradition that allows women to propose to men — and Scott and the team spend the entire show dreaming up increasingly elaborate schemes to coerce her reluctant boyfriend James into popping the question.
The episode opens with Scott explaining the Leap Day tradition, then launching into a series of increasingly desperate attempts to get James to propose to Laura instead. The first involves subliminal messages hidden in reversed Casualty dialogue — words like “Ask her to marry you” and “Buy Laura an engagement ring” — layered over a mundane phone conversation between James and Laura discussing what to have for dinner. When that fails to work, the team calls James pretending to be a recruitment consultant offering him a lucrative £90,000 job, with a specific requirement that he be married to qualify — a transparent wind-up that James quickly sees through.
The third attempt brings in Mark Chapman, who delivers an earnest plea on behalf of Laura, urging James to “do the honorable thing” and marry her so she’ll “shut up” and stop pestering him. When that also fails, Gareth Gates — the winner of a previous competition to date Laura — is brought in to add pressure, threatening to marry her himself if James doesn’t step up by 5 o’clock.
The show also takes a prolonged detour into EastEnders, where the team dissects recent scenes involving Ian in “fetching tanga briefs” being massaged by Clare, with Jane discovering them in a compromising position. The highlight (or low point, depending on perspective) involves Clare offering to show Ian her “bird of paradise” — a line that Scott finds simultaneously hilarious and revolting. The extended mockery of these scenes takes up a significant chunk of the show.
By the end, James finally calls the studio with only minutes left before the 5 o’clock deadline. He confirms he and Laura will talk “later on,” leaving the outcome deliberately ambiguous, though he pointedly notes there are “still a good seven hours of the 29th left.”
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