The film depicts
Steve Coogan playing himself as an arrogant actor with low self-esteem and a complicated love life. Coogan is playing the eponymous role in an adaptation of
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman being filmed at a stately home. He constantly spars with actor
Rob Brydon, who is playing Uncle Toby and who believes that his role is of equal importance to Coogan's, calling himself the "co-lead". The film incorporates several sequences from
Tristram Shandy. Not all of these are part of the film-within-the-film. The latter are limited to the story of Tristram's conception, birth and christening; Uncle Toby's experiences at the
Battle of Namur and Tristram's sudden and accidental
circumcision at the age of three. Uncle Toby's wooing of Widow Wadman (Gillian Anderson) takes place in a sequence dreamed by Steve Coogan and after the cast and crew have viewed the "completed" film ending, with Walter Shandy fainting at the sight of his wife giving birth, the question "How does the book end?" is followed by the concluding scene of the novel, in which Yorick says "It is a story about a Cock and a Bull – and the best of its kind that ever I heard!" Yorick is not in the film-within-the-film; in this scene he is played by
Stephen Fry, who appears elsewhere in the film as Patrick, a caricatured version of the actual curator at
Shandy Hall. The DVD extras include a scene of Fry talking with the curator he portrays. ==Cast==