Born into poverty from immigrant parents, Frank Kusy learns to live by his wits – first as a pocket-sized wheeler dealer in 1960's London, then as an unwitting money collector for local gangsters, and after that as the scourge of his Jesuit teachers. With his antics driving his Hungarian mother to despair, he vows that one day he will make her proud of him. It is a vow he will find difficult to keep.