Toast of London

- Season 1

(2013)

Pilloried by the public after appearing in a controversial West End play, actor Steven Toast is recently-divorced and living with his friend Ed Howzer-Black and Ed's elderly mistress Goodhouse, an agoraphobic who has not left the house in two years for fear of a local flasher. He would move into the club where his shell-shocked ex-soldier brother Blair lives but Ray Purchase, a rival actor who caught Toast in bed with his wife, prevents it. Toast auditions to play a gay detective in 'Summer Time Murders' but has to audition in prison since the producer Cliff Promise ...

Actor Steven Toast is informed by agent Jane Plough that Braz magazine have awarded him a Best Actor award. As a result he is interviewed by journalist Susan Random, to whom he is attracted, despite her being an alcoholic and extreme hoarder, whose house is full of junk. He is also pursued by Jemima Gina, who wears an electronic tag after being found guilty of trying to murder her boyfriend and who follows him to Susan's house. Both women discover that they like collecting beaks but the romance is killed for Steven. House-mate Ed is hosting a Nigerian girl-friend ...

After yet another appalling review Steven rehearses for a new play but encounters a double obstacle. One is the presence of the vengeful Ray Purchase as co-star, the other the fact that the director, Acker Herron, is a lunatic who kills actors who will not obey him. Indeed Steven finds himself literally taking part in a life and death duel with Herron - which he is lucky to win. Afterwards he goes to a hotel to have 'afternoon tea' with an escort whom he has booked through an agency - only to discover that an old flame, TV producer Greta Cargo, is involved.

After his foul-mouthed ex-wife Ellen beats him up with a club on a mini-golf course Steven learns that she wants a hefty divorce settlement so it seems a gift when he is offered a part in the block-buster 'Prince Philip, Scoundrel Dog' directed by anti-Royalist rich Arab Mr Fasili. Jane thinks this is too controversial and suggests he does a laxative ad instead but Steven is not keen. However, when Mr Fasili dies before paying him Steven is all set to become the face of Lax-A-Daisy, until he finds out what happened to the last actor to do this.

Having recorded voice-overs for use on new navy submarine the 'Penetrator', Toast, who has a penchant for ladies in uniform, is delighted when Commander Scott-Gorham, the woman officer in charge, invites him to its launch. Together they overpower mad vice-commander Hopkinson-Finch, who claims that he was abducted by aliens who have programmed him to launch a nuclear strike on America and end up with a date in the offing. This does not sit well with Steven's current girlfriend Portia de Coogan, daughter of Defence Minister Lord Fotheringham but then his lordship gets ...

Tired of voice-overs and the awful play Steven writes an erotic novel - as Paloma Toast - and new agent Brooke Hooberman secures a deal with publisher Yvonne Wryly to take it. Unfortunately it lacks an ending though when Steven devises one Yvonne derides it, whereupon life rather grotesquely mirrors art. At the same time Steven has sex with bar pick-up Kate Khan in the presence of her supposedly blind aunt but when he is approached to make a porn movie it turns out that the aunt was actually filming him with Kate. In the event neither of his alternative new careers ...

After failing to become the screen's next James Bond Steven loses twenty thousand pounds to Andrew Lloyd Webber in a poker game and is pursued by Lloyd Webber's recovery man Michael Ball though finding time to dub a gay German porn film with Ray Purchase - not very well. Having escaped Purchase, who has caught him in bed with his wife again, Steven flees from Michael Ball, ending up on a stage in a small theatrical production where Purchase inadvertently saves him from Ball. Critics and audiences however love what they see and Steven is declared a hit at last.