Editing One Foot in the Grave (section)

===Supporting characters===
'''Jean Warboys''' ([[Doreen Mantle]]) – Mrs Warboys is a friend of Margaret's (and a rather annoying one in Victor's eyes) who has attached herself to the Meldrews, accompanying them on many of their exploits. Until the fourth series she is married to ([[unseen character|unseen]]) Chris until he leaves her for a private detective she had hired, believing he was having an affair, and they divorce.

She often bears the brunt of Victor's temper due to muddled misunderstandings and in part due to her aloof nature. One such occasion saw Victor asking her to pick up a suit of his from the dry-cleaners, only for her to return with a [[gorilla suit]]. Another occasion saw her persuading Victor to take on a dog whose owner had just died. Victor spent time building a kennel in the garden and when Mrs Warboys arrives with the dog, she forgets to mention that the dog is [[taxidermy|stuffed]], much to Victor and Margaret's consternation. On another occasion she wins a competition where the prize is either £500 or to have a life-size waxwork model made of herself, which had to be delivered to the Meldrews' house; she chooses the waxwork. As it turns out, she hates it as much as Victor and Margaret do, and the waxwork ends up in the dustbin.

Despite being friends, she has driven Margaret to distraction on several occasions, most notably in "Only a Story", when she stayed with the Meldrews after her flat had been flooded and enraged Margaret with her complaining and laziness. Jean is also shown as a somewhat absent-minded character, as she has a pet [[cockatiel]] despite her lifelong allergy to feathers. She would often bore the Meldrews by showing them her complete collection of holiday pictures at the most unwelcome times. A running joke is her beating Victor at board games, including Trivial Pursuit and [[chess]], while having a conversation with someone else. Doreen Mantle described her character as "wanting to do the right thing but always finding out that it was the wrong thing".<ref>"I Don't Believe It!: The One Foot in the Grave story", documentary, BBC Worldwide 2005.</ref> Victor's annoyance with her is often demonstrated by shouting her name, sometimes repeatedly, in an impatient tone.

'''Patrick Trench''' ([[Angus Deayton]]) – Patrick and his wife Pippa live next door to Victor from the second series. Patrick often catches Victor engrossed in seemingly preposterous situations, all of which in context are perfectly innocuous. The couple's relationship with their neighbours begins badly after Victor mistakes Patrick and Pippa for distant relations when they arrive outside with three suitcases{{spaced ndash}}not realising that they are his next-door neighbours, having been on a lengthy holiday from the day Victor and Margaret moved in. Victor subsequently invites the bemused pair to stay; this and later incidents cause Patrick to suspect that Victor is quite insane, possibly bordering on malicious.

However, Patrick's rift with Victor eventually transforms him into a rather cynical character (much like Victor) and he often responds to him in similarly petty or vindictive ways as a means of trying to settle the score, such as writing complaints and grievances on [[Post-it Note]]s. This aspect of Patrick's character came to a head in the episode "The Executioner's Song" where his face temporarily morphs into that of Victor's as he looks into a mirror.

It is mentioned several times that Patrick would like to have children. After Pippa miscarries and Patrick is, so he claims, rendered infertile by a freak accident (for which he unfairly blames Victor), he adopts a [[dachshund]] called Denzil, which Pippa describes as his "baby substitute". Denzil frequently appears with Patrick through series 3–5. Despite their animosity towards each other, Victor ends up saving Patrick's life in "The Wisdom of the Witch".

'''Pippa Trench (née Croker)''' ([[Janine Duvitski]]) – Patrick's wife – a bus driver – sought friendly relations with the Meldrews and, after a while, became good friends with Margaret. The two women usually attempt to get their husbands to make peace with each other at least once per series. Eventually Patrick proposes that the Trenches move house, but they soon realise that the Meldrew curse has followed them: Victor sent workmen to their home, thinking they were removal men who had initially come to the wrong house. They were in fact from a house clearance firm Margaret had employed to clear her late cousin Ursula's country mansion. The workmen consequently cleared Patrick and Pippa's house of their entire furniture and sold it for a mere £475. Pippa is slightly dim-witted (Victor once described her as a "gormless twerp" on an answering machine message, unaware she was listening){{spaced ndash}}for example, believing Victor had murdered an elderly blind man simply because the victim had been found clutching a double-one [[domino]] in his hand and Victor had two pimples on his nose.

New neighbours Derek and Betty McVitie replaced the Trenches for the 1997 special "Endgame". However, this turned out to be their only appearances in the series and they were said to have emigrated by the penultimate episode, which caused Nick Swainey to leap straight in with the offer for their old house. Series six saw the Trenches return as prominent characters, albeit living in a house some distance from the Meldrews. Despite appearing in five out of six series and three Christmas specials, neither of the Trenches ever share a scene with Mrs Warboys and Pippa only ever shares one scene with Nick Swainey (in the episode "Who Will Buy?").

'''Nick Swainey''' ([[Owen Brenman]]) – The excessively cheerful and often oblivious Mr Swainey appeared in the first episode, encouraging Victor to join his OAPs' trip to Eastbourne and being greeted with Victor's trademark abuse. When the Meldrews move house, they discover he is their neighbour, living on the other side of the Meldrews from the Trenches. He remains continuously optimistic; even his being told to "piss off" by Victor is laughed off. Despite this run-in he later befriends Victor and they frequently chat in their gardens, where Victor is often surprised by Mr Swainey's activities, ranging from archery and preparing amateur dramatics props, to bizarre games he arranges for his senile, bedridden mother, whom the audience never actually see. Despite his cheery demeanour, he does occasionally drop his guard, once displaying apparent depression at being nothing more than "an overgrown Boy Scout". Following his mother's death, he moved house near the end of the series, but only went as far as the Trenches'/McVities' old house, claiming he had "always wanted to live in an end house, without leaving the area". This took Victor by surprise; he did not learn where Mr Swainey was moving to until, while reminiscing in the garden about his departure, Mr Swainey suddenly appeared from the other side.