Richard Willey, a Government Junior Minister, plans an evening with Jane Worthington, one of the Opposition’s typists, but things go disastrously wrong, beginning with the discovery of a ‘body’ trapped in the hotel’s only unreliable sash window. Richard calls for his PPS, George Pigden who, through Richard’s lies, sinks deeper into trouble with everybody and goes through an identity crisis.

Things go from bad to worse with the arrival of Ronnie, Jane’s distraught young husband: with the addition of an unscrupulous waiter, Mrs Willey and Nurse Foster, things really come to a head.