Life for Evelyn, Mick and their five-year-old son Jamie is relatively trouble free - until Evelyn's brother Shug comes to stay. Shug is a typical Buckfast-drinking, living-for-the-moment Glasgow guy whose chosen professions are car theft and robbery. The only person Shug genuinely cares about is his nephew Jamie.

So when he suspects the local lollipop man of child abuse he takes the law into his own hands. Soon both the police and the local hard-men are on Shug's trail. But, with his chameleon ways and lucky streak he narrowly manages to avoid ending up either in prison or at the bottom of the river Clyde wearing concrete shoes.