chapter 2

Description

Act 1: Bean sees a busker playing a saxophone and wants to drop some change in his saxophone case. When he finds he has no change, he places his handkerchief on the ground and dances in a rather silly way to the saxophone music; a woman stops by and leaves him a coin, which he then transfers to the saxophonist's case. Act 2: Bean tries out his new American Express charge card at Allders department store. After appearing to suffocate whilst going through the perfume department, he does his shopping by first testing everything he wants to buy — he opens and uses a toothbrush, tries on a bath towel, peels a potato with a peeler he wants to buy, and pulls a large fish out of his pocket to see if it fits on a frying pan. He also chooses the telephone from the receptionist's desk as the one he wants and takes it with him, plug and all, because it was the only phone that gave a dialing tone when picked up; he assumed the other phones (disconnected display models) were broken. At the register, he accidentally swaps cards with another man (Paul McDowell) who has the same kind of card as he; Bean pick-pockets the man and gets his card back (instead of speaking with the man, of course), but his hand gets stuck, and the man unwittingly pulls him all the way into a toilet stall. In the toilet stall, he frees his hand and shocks the man by offering him a roll of toilet paper. Act 3: Bean goes to a restaurant on his birthday and orders a steak tartare (after gifting a birthday card to himself), which he expected to be a real steak. Disgusted by the tartare's taste and appearance, he cuts it up and hides the pieces in different places (ashtray, tiny flower vase, sugar bowl, hollowed-out roll, under a plate, violinist's trousers, woman's handbag). Conveniently, a waiter walks by and spills his tray all over Bean's table, which provides him with an opportunity to cover up his actions by showing the waiter and the maitre d' that the tartare has ended up inside the vase, inside his bread, under his plate, in the violinist's trousers, and in the woman's handbag. The maitre d' apologizes and promptly moves Bean, who pretends to complain about the incident by mumbling, to another table, where the waiter brings out another dish, which, unfortunately for Bean, is another steak tartare, seemingly bigger than the first, and he seemingly must finish it, as the maitre d', the waiter and the violinist are all watching him. Act 4: Bean is waiting to meet Queen Elizabeth II at a royal premiere at the Odeon Leicester Square cinema, but is quite unprepared (his nails and teeth are dirty, his breath smells, and his shoes are unpolished). He manages to rectify most of these problems to his satisfaction (using spit to polish his shoes, folding back the corners of a postcard to serve as a pocket handkerchief, and using a loose thread from an usherette's uniform to floss his teeth), but when he uses his trouser zip to clean his fingernail, the zip gets stuck, and he only manages to force it back up just before the Queen greets him. Preparing for a bow, Bean accidentally headbutts the Queen, who is knocked to the floor. During the confusion, Bean makes a run for it.