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It was 1968: the year when Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated. It's also the year when YSK Films are making a movie in Brighton. It's called ''Emily Bracegirdle's Extremely Useful Ladder to the Moon'', or ''Ladder the Moon'' as it's known on set. Anny Viklund is the female star in a production which is proving to be just a little bit rackety. There are odd pressures on the producer, Talbot Kydd, to employ this old actor friend for a couple of days because he needs the money, allow a fading star to use his catchphrase, or include a song from the leading man, whose musical star is fading.
Anny and Troy are having an affair, as are their characters, Emily and Ben, in the film. In either case, no one must know. EmilyAnny's boyfriend, French philosopher Jacques Soldat, could turn up on the set at any time and Ben is Emily's driver, so the relationship would be frowned upon: this is the sixties, after all. Reggie Tipton - well he prefers to be called Rodrigo Tipton - is the director and one of the perks of the job is that he gets a rather splendid house for the duration of the filming and installed there is his wife, novelist Elfrida Wing. Well, I call her a 'novelist' but the days when she was known as ''the new Virginia Woolf'' have passed by in a cloud of alcohol fumes and she thinks that no one knows what's in those bottles of Sarson's white vinegar. She can't make up her mind whether she's a 'sipper' or a 'bender' as far as her vodka consumption goes but she's rarely far removed from her last glass. She does know that she doesn't trust Reggie: he has form.
Anny Viklund has another problem. Well, it shouldn't be a problem, really as Cornell Weekes is, as she keeps stating, her ''ex''-husband, but he's just escaped custody and the FBI are sure that she knows something about his whereabouts. She does, actually, but it's not sympathy with his views which persuades her to give him some money but an attempt to simplify her life: trying to keep a professional face on a boyfriend, an affair and an ex-husband who's a terrorist is getting a bit much.