Gussie Fink-Nottle goes wading for newts in a Trafalgar Square fountain at 4 a.m. and is sentenced to fourteen days in prison. This is awkward because he, as Madeline Bassett's fiancé, is due to present himself at Deverill Hall, where Madeline's godmother, Dame Daphne Winkworth, lives and wants to meet him. Bertie is due there too, to star in a village concert organized by the Vicar's niece, Corky Pirbright, Hollywood star, sister of 'Catsmeat'. Corky is in love, and vice versa, with the squire, rich, handsome Esmond Haddock. Deverill Hall is his home, but full of his disapproving aunts, Dame Daphne being one. Corky says she won't marry Esmond until he defies his aunts and tells them to get off his back.

Bertie must at all costs prevent Madeline knowing that her fiancé is doing time, since, whenever she rejects Gussie, she reaches for the man who can't say No, Bertie Wooster. So Bertie goes to Deverill Hall saying he is Gussie. Then Gussie's sentence is remitted and he arrives saying he is Bertie Wooster, and Corky ropes him, too, into the concert. He falls in love with her. Madeline, who could explode this double imposture, announces that she is coming to the Hall, and she must be kept away. Aunt Agatha, who could also blow all gaffs, threatens to come. Jeeves goes to her son, Young Thos's, prep school and easily lures him into doing a bunk and coming to stay with Corky at the Vicarage - so that his mother will go safely to Bramley-on-sea to join the search for him in Sussex.

Jeeves's uncle, Charlie Silversmith, is butier at Deverill Hall. And there is an atheist village policeman who harrasses the Vicar and who's in love with the housemaid at the hall. Jeeves converts Constable Dobbs to theism with a cosh. Catsmeat elopes with his beloved Gertrude, daughter of Dame Daphne.

The big scene is the village concert, at which Esmond comes out strong and poor Bertie, alias Fink-Nottle, has to recite Winnie-the-Pooh verses.

Two pinpricks and a mild raspberry here could remind the alert that Wodehouse was remembering three people who had attacked him for his wartime broadcast talks to America from Berlin. Gussie, up before the beak after his newt-hunt in the Trafalgar Square fountain, gives his name as Alfred Duff Cooper. Duff Cooper had been the Minister of Information who had sponsored William 'Cassandra' Connor's attack on Wodehouse on the BBC National Service. One of the (bad) performers in the King's Deverill village concert was Miss Eustacia Pulbrook. Sir Eustace Pulbrook, an eminent old boy of Dulwich, had spoken or written something derogatory about eminent Old Boy Wodehouse at the time. And A.A. Milne, whose Winnie-the-Pooh verses struck such terror (of being given the bird with vegetables in the air) into Bertie's heart when he found he had to recite them in public, had written a sly and damaging letter about his 'old friend' in the Daily Telegraph.

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