two poverty-stricken foreign devils, Senor Grytpype-Thynne and Count Moriarty, are watching TV in their chicken-run in a King's Cross back alley when Neddie Seagoon arrives to empty the gas meter. Seagoon, staggering under the weight of a sack bursting with coppers, foolishly accepts an offer to join them in a quarter-bottle of Maurice Ponk's doped apple-jack. While still reeling from the effects of this vicious carousal, he is introduced to Gladys Knees, a diaphanous spy and part-time dustwoman, who introduces him to sink further into the abyss of vice by partaking of a portion of heavily loaded smoked haddock. Before he lapses into unconsciousness, he overhears the mysterious Count Jim booking reservations for South America and realizes that he has become enmeshed in the plot to kidnap President Fred and relieve him of his historic portion of the International Christmas Pudding.