It stars Richard E. Grant as Alistair Berg, a man who travels to a seaside town intending to murder the father who abandoned him and his mother many years earlier, and is now living in a dilapidated hotel with a much younger woman.
Alistair Berg is a neurotic only child and unsuccessful door-to-door salesman from Harlow New Town who arrives home one day to be informed by his mother that she has received a letter from his father, who abandoned them years earlier but now claims he wishes to be reunited with them.
After another argument, however, Judith throws the ventriloquists dummy out of a window, from where the same gang who started the fight at the bingo take it and put it on a bonfire before Nathy and Berg manage to retrieve it.
However, during a celebratory dinner the landlady of the hotel brings them a letter from Nathy that she says he hand delivered that morning, leading Judith to question whether Berg really did kill him, and it transpires that he had mistakenly strangled the dummy, thinking it was his father, who is still alive.
Luisa now leaves for Broadstairs, where her next performance is due to take place, and as Berg bids her farewell his mother arrives at the train station in order to check on his progress, unaware of what has been going on.