Best-selling travel author Reggie Blake (Terry-Thomas) is successful largely because of the publicity stunts of his astute publisher, Charles Lunton (Wilfrid Hyde-White). Sales of his books have repeatedly skyrocketed following carefully contrived stunts – Reggie was “lost” in Afrida, South America, and finally the Arctic, each time returning to civilisation in a glare of publicity.
But one of these stunts goes wrong. When Reggie gets “lost” in the desert, he finds himself really stranded with a remote Bedouin tribe for two months.
When he returns home to England, his wife, Fran (Janette Scott), finds he has adopted Bedouin dress, absorbed many of their ways and begins to treat her as an Arab husband would. He upsets his publisher with his new ideas, and Fran soon finds him impossible to live with.
The couple split up the house, and everything becomes either “his” or “hers” – including performing the household chores and looking after the baby.
The chaos resulting from this arrangement provides the merry basis for the film.
Finding himself without a publisher for the book he believes will be his masterpiece, Reggie initially turns down a £20,000 offer for the film rights “as a matter of principle”. But he weakens when the crafty film director sends a beautiful French girl photographer, Simone (Nicole Maurey), to help him change his mind.
Fran eventually decides to write her own book, exposing Reggie as a pompous fraud.
Reggie Blake
Terry-Thomas Fran Blake
Janette Scott Charles Lunton
Wilfrid Hyde-White Simone Rolfe
Nicole Maurey Harold
Kenneth Connor Hortense
Joan Sims TV Announcer
Colin Gordon Policeman
Kenneth Williams Felix McGregor
Meier Tzelniker Phoebe
Joan Hickson Woman
Barbara Hicks Poet
Oliver Reed Wanda
Francesca Annis The Baby
Billy Lambert
Director
Brian Desmond Hurst
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When he returns home to England, his wife, Fran (Janette Scott), finds he has adopted Bedouin dress, absorbed many of their ways and begins to treat her as an Arab husband would. He upsets his publisher with his new ideas, and Fran soon finds him impossible to live with.
