Two feuding health inspectors, Danny Skinner and Brian Kibbey, work for the Edinburgh Restaurant Inspectorate. Skinner is a drunkard and a football fan, hates and terrorizes Kibbie, and in his free time reads Rimbaud, Verlaine and Schopenhauer and watches Fellini films. Kibby, quiet and shy, collects model trains, is a fan of Star Trek, is afraid of everything and ends up in the hospital with liver disease - despite the fact that he has never drank a drop. And Skinner decides to recover from alcoholism, goes to America and there - at a meeting of the Society of Alcoholics Anonymous - he finds the girl of his dreams. But the girl is not enough for him, he wants to find the one with whom his mother conceived him at a Clash concert in 1980. And this alcove secret turns out to be key here - the hero cannot become himself until he finds out who his father is... The book contains obscene language.