Two illegal immigrants from Pakistan arrive in England via Amsterdam and move into lodgings run by an Irishman. This controversial show was planned to be a six episode sitcom and six episodes were indeed filmed.

The other five have never been shown although the scripts have been published in book form.

With:- SPIKE MILLIGAN as Mr Van Gogh / JOHN BIRD as Mr Rembrandt / FRANK CARSON as Paddy O'Brien / ALEXANDRA DANE as Nefertiti Skupinski / WAYNE BROWN as Luigi O'Reilly / HARRY FOWLER as Eric Lee Fung / JOHN BLUTHAL as Richard Armitage / ROBERT DORNING as Colonel Grope / BILL KERR as Bluey Notts

 Six years after Johnny Speight's controversial Curry And Chips  Spike Milligan once more appeared blacked-up, this time as an illegal immigrant to boot (must be black boots!). He and John Bird were cast as a Pakistani father and son who enter Britain illegally by rowing boat, believing it to be the milk and honey land of free speech and no racism. Arriving via Amsterdam, where they have naively picked up the 'discreet' pseudonyms Mr Van Gogh and Mr Rembrandt, they end up living at 7 Piles Road, London, in the dingy lodgings of an Irish Republican coalman, Paddy O'Brien, and his sensual, South African-raised daughter Nefertiti Skupinski. The house is pandemonium, and the two Asians are true innocents abroad, mixing it with the other lodgers and regular visitors: black Yorkshireman Luigi O'Reilly, Chinese cockney spiv Eric Lee Fung, Orthodox London Jew Richard Armitage, the alcoholic, racist ex-Indian army officer Colonel Grope, the crude, racist Australian bookie's runner Bluey Notts, and the Orthodox Arab with a Scots accent (he works at the Bank of Scotland, Peckham branch) Sheik Yamani.

The idea, as with Curry And Chips, was to ridicule racism and highlight the ignorance of the issue but the style was misjudged and the ingredients constituted way too much of a heady brew for the BBC to handle - the five remaining episodes of the six-part series, all in-the-can, were never shown. All six scripts for The Melting Pot were published in a book of that title in 1983.