First of the Ealing comedies. A bunch of crooks use a comic paper, featuring stories penned by Felix H. Wilkinson (Alastair Sim), to pass on coded messages for robberies. When the comic's readership, a bunch of East End boys, discover what's going on they go to the police. The local constabulary, however, are no help, and so the plucky lads set out to foil the robbers themselves.

Eccentric Sidney Stratton (Alec Guiness) is a laboratory cleaner in a textile factory, who invents a material that will neither wear out nor become dirty. Initially hailed as a great discovery, Sidney's astonishing invention is suffocated by the management when they realise that if it never wears out, people will only ever have to purchase one suit of clothing.