Hartlepool, the late 1970s. Lee, an Asian waiter of indeterminate origin, is about to embark on his afternoon off, and his colleague Bernard has given him a tip-off about a woman named Iris who apparently found his photograph appealing.
The chef, Marjory, is unimpressed by Lee's purchase of chocolates as a gift, saying that things have changed since the liberation of Berlin in 1945 and women are choosier these days. Bernard coaches Lee fruitlessly in the correct pronunciation of 'Iris', tells him that she works in a shoe shop and that she gets off at four.
Lee arrives at the shop an hour early and wanders into a social club, where it is assumed he is part of a visiting delegation. At an art gallery, he listens silently to an attendant's complaints about his unsatisfactory visitors. Lee's package (chocolates) is gingerly checked for explosives. In a church, Lee looks at memorial inscriptions while a woman arranges flowers and tells him about her friend, the only Buddhist in Stroud.
When the church clock strikes four, Lee rushes back to the shoe shop. When he asks a shelf-stacker - Shirley - about Iris, he is told that she left. The manager tells him that Iris stole various items from the shop that have not yet been recovered. He shows Lee a newly-installed CCTV camera and advises him to be careful. Showing him out, Shirley says that she thinks Iris's father works at a nearby factory.
While waiting for a bus, Lee spots an advertisement for a song recital by Iris Butterfield, which he mistakenly thinks is the correct surname (it's actually Butterworth). She is singing a duet, 'Pedro the Fisherman', to an audience of elderly ladies whistling along. Lee inadvertently walks on stage and is given a round of applause. He beats a hasty retreat.
At the factory, he asks salesman Stanley and his secretary Christine about Iris. Stanley recalls that there used to be an Iris working in the canteen, and that her father is Mr Butterworth from the pressing shop. Lee passes the boss, Mr Turnbull, on the way out, who looks suspicious.
Lee finds Iris' father Duggie in the pressing shop. He claims to know who Lee is, but it quickly becomes clear that he's merely assuming that he's responsible for everything that's befallen his daughter, whom he describes as a scrubber. He tells Lee that she works at the local hospital in the geriatric wards.
Leaving, Lee bumps into Mr Turnbull again, who accuses him of being an industrial spy from the Far East or, alternatively, a member of Aslef, both equally undesirable. Lee asks him where the hospital is, and is told that the factory is a hospital, full of sick people wishing to be cured of the urge to work.
Lee sits wistfully in a coffee shop listening to the banal conversation of its manager and one of her regular customers. When he leaves, they notice that he has been crying.
At the hospital, Lee asks to see Iris. The nurses assume that he's too nice to be after "that Iris" and decide that he's a student visitor for a different Iris, an elderly woman in a semi-comatose state. Mrs Beevers, a talkative woman in the bed opposite, urges Lee to wake her. Old Iris is surprised to see Lee, as her late husband was a Japanese prisoner of war. Mrs Beevers muses on the cultural melting-pot that Hartlepool has become. Lee offers Iris the chocolates, which are quickly appropriated by Mrs Beevers, who tells Lee to hand them round the ward. He is caught doing this by a furious nurse, who tells him that Iris has only just recovered from a diabetic coma.
Dejected, Lee returns to the hotel, and hears noises coming from Bernard's room. He finds him in bed with a woman, who turns out to be Iris. Bernard tells her what a nice lad Lee is, but she thinks he looks a bit creepy. Lee goes back to his room, alone.
