If I Were You

Obviously fleshed out from a play-script. Act 1 Country House, 2, Barber shop in Knightsbridge, 3, Country House. This time the old nannie is chief trouble-maker and flywheel for the plot. Mrs Price, something of a drunk, sister of Slingsby the butler, had been nannie to the fifth Earl of Droitwich and is mother of Syd who runs a successful hair-dressing establishment in Knightsbridge. Or is it the other way round? Was there a cradle-swap? Is cockney Syd the rightful earl and charming aristo Tony the rightful barber? Ma Price knows the answer and Tony's relatives have, behind Tony's back, bribed and pensioned her to keep her mouth shut. But alcohol opens it and Syd is going to take his case - backed by a strong likeness to one of the early earls in the portrait gallery - to the House of Lords. Tony is happy enough to lose the earldom because it will free him of his engagement to Violet, haughty daughter and heiress of Waddington's Ninety-Seven Soups. He has fallen in love with sweet Polly Brown, American, manicurist in Price's Hygienic Toilet Saloon of Mott Street, Knightsbridge.

Well, who is the fifth earl of Droitwich today? And who's the countess? And who's making a million out of Price's newly patented Derma Vitalis Hair Tonic?

Source: Richard Usborne. Plum Sauce. A P G Wodehouse Companion.