It's New Year's Eve in Thatcher's de-industrialising Britain. The scene is set at a seedy bar in Liverpool where a group of Irish Protestant and Irish Catholic pensioners will gather to clash and bash the new year in.
In 1910s London, Paul Presset, a self-effacing, decent man of fifty, confronts what appears to be the perfect opportunity to rid himself of his unloved, nagging wife and be free for a blissful life with his mistress.
