The story takes place in Barrytown, North Dublin in December of 1989. After just having received his pink-slip, Bimbo hits upon an idea: he'll buy a fish'n'chips van with his severance pay. His intrepid pal Weslie unearths a van at a reasonable price and Bimbo has his premises. It is dangerous, disgusting, beyond filthy and "like the inside of a leper," says Bimbo, but it does have four wheels and an engine.  Bimbo offers to make Larry, his oldest and closest friend (and a fully paid member of the unemployed), a partner. Despite hair-raising encounters with hostile customers and supercilious officials, the van is an instant success.  But as business prospers, their friendship falters. Their uneasy relationship produces only mutual resentment and it threatens to turn violent; and an unhappy Bimbo makes a quixotic last bid, desperate, drunken - and daft - to put things back the way they were.