The story's skeleton also borrowed liberally from Orton's final novel, written in 1959, called The Vision of Gombold Provol (posthumously published as Head to Toe).
Orton further revised Up Against It after this event, paring down the four leads to three (mainly by combining parts intended for Beatles members George Harrison and Ringo Starr into one role).
They are banished because Ian has deflowered Rowena Torrence, niece of the local high priest, Father Brodie; present to see them off are amiably opportunistic Mayor Terence O'Scullion, sexually dangerous police official Connie Boon ("rhymes with loon", the Mayor says), and plain-Jane secretary Miss Patricia Drumgoole, who is desperately in love with Ian.
Also in Ramsay's ragged cadre are the deposed Mayor, embittered kept boy Christopher, and Miss Drumgoole, now a government clerk out to commit sabotage.
Later, Jack disrupts the Prime Minister's funeral march with a speech in favor of public debauchery and an end to private perversion.
They escape through a sewer and into the sea, where they are pulled into a luxury yacht attended by none other than Christopher Low, who is cabin boy to the now-married Rowena and Coates.
At which point Father Brodie materializes, surrounded in sepulchral procession by the chants and prayers of the faithful, to bless the hellish battlefield.
Christopher, appalled once too often by Connie's virulent sexism, calls off their engagement; Jack's father finds himself demoted to hotel bellhop; and Ian, though he still loves Rowena, offers himself to the faithful Miss Drumgoole.
Ian, Jack, and Christopher wed Miss Drumgoole in a Mass officiated by Father Brodie and attended by the whole happy cast, and the screenplay ends with bride and grooms in polygamous morning-after intimacy, disappearing with squeals of delight under the conjugal sheets.
The cast included Fawlty Towers' Prunella Scales, Blur's singer Damon Albarn, and Leo McKern as the narrator.