The self-contained ground floor flat at 33 Highgate Avenue becomes vacant when the Rush family's sitting tenant, elderly Arthur Fenston, dies. After the funeral his relatives arrive to pick it clean of his possessions. While Jacqui and Susan plan a party [to celebrate the simple fact that they can have one without the police being called], their father Dudley sets his mind to finding a new tenant. With a little help from their friends, David and Angela Jones, the girls hatch a plot to secure the flat for themselves.

The girls move into their flat, and Dudley helps them get an old black and white television set down from the loft, picking up a glove puppet and a guitar in the process; the latter reminds him of his youth, when he played skiffle, and he attempts to rope Jacqui and Susan into a group. Meanwhile, Dudley's Welsh editor, Duncan Thomas, arrives at the house to find out why he is a fortnight behind with his artwork for Barney the Bionic Bulldog, and gets soaked during an attempt by the Rushes' to clear a supposed airlock in the cold water pipe. He blows his top and fires Dudley.

Whilst Dudley decides to learn Japanese, the company which prints The Wowser decides to go on strike, so Duncan arrives at the Rush house to ask Dudley to rush through three pages of Barney the Bionic Bulldog in order to stockpile three issues. Although Dudley is due for jury service at the Old Bailey the next day, Muriel pressures her husband into complying so that she can go on a shopping spree with the promised bonus. Assisted by his family, Dudley burns the midnight oil and comes up trumps. He takes his bleary-eyed place on a jury trying an intruder, but risks contempt of court when he falls asleep.

The ""ever-present pooh bird of fate"" seems to be permanently circling the Rush household, dumping on them from a great height. The car requires open-bonnet surgery to the tune of £80, Muriel is fined £6 for going five miles over a thirty miles per hour speed limit and Dudley dismantles the washing-machine to discover why it isn't working. On top of this, the television set, refrigerator, radio and iron start playing up. Meanwhile, daughter Susan wants to get rid of her boring boyfriend, Sid Foster. The family's electrical problems seem to be solved when it is revealed that Sid is an engineer, and a deal is struck; Dudley will give Sid advice on seduction, whilst he effects the necessary repairs.

Whilst Susan pigs out on food and frets about premarital sex, Muriel arranges to travel to Bournemouth by train for the weekend to celebrate her sister Sarah's birthday. An old divorced friend of Dudley's, insurance salesman Dick Mitchell, telephones to say he has come down from Birmingham for a few days, and arranges for them to get together for dinner that evening at The White Cockatoo in town, on his expense account. Dudley arrives at the fashionable restaurant to discover that Dick has booked the company of two attractive escort service girls, Mimi and Barbara, who transpire to be big fans of Barney the Bionic Bulldog. Muriel is about to leave for the station when her sister telephones to say one of her children has developed mumps; since Muriel has never had the infectious virus, she postpones her visit and plays a game of Monopoly with Susan and Jacqui before retiring to bed with a Harold Robbins' novel. Dick, meanwhile, insists on taking Mimi and Barbara back to Dudley's place f