Philip Bredin

Jimmy Rabbitte, just a thick-ya out of school, gets a brilliant idea: to put a soul band together in Barrytown, his slum home in north Dublin. First he needs musicians and singers: things slowly start to click when he finds three fine-voiced females virtually in his back yard, a lead singer (Deco) at a wedding, and, responding to his ad, an aging trumpet player, Joey "The Lips" Fagan.

"How to cheat the Leaving Certificate?" : a question posed by thousands of students every year in Ireland. A group of pupils set up an elaborate master-plan to beat the system and top the points race.