Brenda and Yvonne, two girls from the North of England, arrive in London to seek fame and fortune. However, their image of the city is quickly tarnished when they are robbed of their savings by a tramp. Determined not to let her chance slip, Yvonne visits Carnaby Street in the hope of catching the eye of a trendy photographer, whilst Brenda has to stay behind and do the washing up in a greasy spoon cafe after the girls cannot afford to pay. Yvonne does get spotted by a trendy photographer, Tom Wabe, but is singled out for being poorly dressed. After several unsuccessful job attempts, she accidentally wins the star prize in a television game show and decides to invest the prize money in becoming a pop star. Her single, "I'm So Young", though patently awful, becomes a big hit and she and Brenda drift apart. As Tom Wabe's muse, Brenda goes on to become a top model, while Yvonne's popularity wanes. However, at a glamorous party at the top of the Post Office Tower, the girls realise the shallowness of the media business and decide to return home.
The film reunited Redgrave, Tushingham and director Davis from the 1964 filmGirl with Green Eyes. Similarly, Murray Melvin and Paul Danquah, Tushingham's co-stars in A Taste of Honey, appear in cameo roles as boutique shop customers. Geoffrey Hughes, later to become familiar to millions as Eddie Yeats in Coronation Street, appears as a workman. The then-popular BBC series Juke Box Jury is parodied as Hi-Fi Court, and the UK version of the hidden camera series Candid Camera is parodied as You Can't Help Laughing! Private Eye magazine at the time referred to the Queen and Princess Margaret as, respectively, Brenda and Yvonne. Some of the characters' names are borrowed from Lewis Carroll's poetry, chiefly the nonsense poem Jabberwocky: Charlotte Brillig, Tom Wabe, Mrs Gimble, Bobby Mome-Rath, Jeremy Tove, Toni Mimsy, and The Snarks. Additionally, the futuristic art exhibition is held at the Jabberwock Gallery. The film was nominated for a Golden Globe in 1968. The theme tune was sung by Tushingham and Redgrave, who also performed several of the numbers in the film. In the 1993 BBC series Hollywood UK, about the British film industry in the 1960s, the actresses appeared in the back of a London taxi singing the theme again.
Reception
The film performed poorly at the box office and ABC recorded a loss of $710,000. The film criticAlexander Walker noted that the film arrived too late to parody 'Swinging London' as the fad was already dead.
