Adam Fenwick-Symes is a bright young thing; a novelist, he has just retuned from Paris only to have the manuscript that he is taking to his publisher confiscated by an over-zealous British customs officer. Contract broken, he is forced to sign a new deal which is far more crippling and he finds himself almost penniless. He breaks off his engagement to Nina Blount because he hasn't the money to keep her in the manner to which she is already accustomed. However, after he wins a thousand pounds in the bar of a hotel in Mayfair, he renews the engagement.
Adam puts all the money on a horse racing bet with a man known as the Major but his new partner absconds immediately with the money. Adam goes to a costume party with Nina and they go on to a secondary get-together afterwards with a girl they just met, who takes them back to Number Ten, Downing Street. She is the Prime Minister's youngest daughter and the party is the talk of the town the next morning, and reported in all of the country's newspapers.
Still conscious of their financial predicament, Nina tells Adam to ask her father for a loan so that they can get married. Adam meets her father, Colonel Blount, for lunch out in the country where the eccentric World War One veteran gives him one thousand pounds, but the following morning Nina looks at the check and realizes that her father has signed it "Charlie Chaplin".
Meanwhile, Adam's friend, the journalist Simon Balcairn, known for penning gossip, tries to get an invitation to Margot Metroland's upcoming party. She refuses to extend one; his day gets even worse when he is horsewhipped by the very angry father of a girl he has written about in his column. He decides to gatecrash the Metroland's party because he wants to use it as gossip fodder for his column. Lady Metroland tries to recruit young English girls to work in her nightclubs in South America; however, he is discovered at the party and ejected before he can find out very much of anything. He writes a biting but completely fictitious account of the party, and prints lies about the people he saw attending, but commits suicide shortly after the column's publication.
Learning of Simon's demise, Adam takes on the role of Mr Chatterbox and takes over the gossip column. He writes about genuine famous people to start, but then begins to create fictional famous celebrities to write about, so that he can write more salacious articles without the risk of being sued by a real-life person. He meets Ginger Littlejohn at a horse racing event and describes his life as a wealthy colonial in his column, which in turn leads to complaints about the recklessness of the younger generation. Adam is later fired from the paper.
His next jaunt is to a small local motor race where he and his friends leave a boarding house they have stayed at without paying the bill. He surprisingly encounters the Major again, who is drunk, and claims that he has Adam's winnings, but he disappears again before Adam can claim them. Nina, tired of the continual lack of money, breaks off her engagement to Adam and accepts Ginger Littlejohn's proposal instead. Ginger is jealous whenever Adam and Nina speak so when they meet for dinner he is almost apoplectic; Adam offers to sell Nina to him for one hundred pounds.
Nina and Ginger marry, and when they return from their honeymoon, Ginger is called up to his regiment. Nina decides to take Adam home with her for Christmas; during the holiday, war is declared. Nina returns to London to wait for Ginger. Adam is sent to fight in France, where he runs into the Major again, still drunk, and for some reason in possession of a substantial amount of confiscated champagne. They share it, drinking with one of the hostesses hired by Lady Metroland for her South American nightclubs; she has become a camp follower, and follows the soldiers.
