Michael Gough, patriarch of the beleaguered Gough family, is reduced to borrowing a leaky barn for his living quarters. It's a far cry from the splendour of the family pile, Sitten Hall, which he was forced to 'gift' to the National Trust some twenty years ago. And worse is yet to come when his elderly mother, Granny Banana, falls out of the back of the Land Rover - a funeral is the last thing the Gough family can afford.

But the least he can do is to give his mother the funeral she wanted, to be buried back at Sitten Hall in the same grave as her cherished terrier, Sprocket. But how to go about it when the family coffers are empty?