Andy and Maggie are best friends who are playing extras in Do Angels Bleed?, the film Ben Stiller is directing, which is based on the life of Goran, an Eastern European man whose wife and son were killed in the Yugoslav Wars. Stiller is an arrogant and boastful bully with little concern for those he's directing. Andy attempts to get a speaking part by befriending Goran, who eventually gets Andy a spoken line. However, Andy gets in an argument with Stiller just before shooting his scene and Stiller kicks him off the set.

Maggie is attracted to one of the crew, John. However, she stops finding him attractive when Andy points out that John has one leg shorter than the other.

Working as extras on the set of Sisters Of Mercy, a Holocaust film, Andy and Maggie befriend the star Kate Winslet, who hopes to finally win an Oscar with her role as a nun sheltering Jews during the Holocaust (coincidentally, she later won an Oscar for her role in the 2008 Holocaust film The Reader). Maggie is in a relationship with a set assistant who wants her to talk dirty with him over the phone, but Maggie has no idea what to say. Winslet helpfully volunteers explicit advice for Maggie on the subject, but Maggie's boyfriend later dumps her when he catches Andy and Winslet making lewd gestures to each other behind his back.

Andy's agent secures him the role of the (very camp) Genie in a pantomime version of Aladdin starring Les Dennis. Fifty-year-old Dennis is engaged to attractive 26-year-old Simone Reynolds (Nicky Ladanowski) but is also on the verge of a breakdown due to the many setbacks in his career. When Andy sees Dennis's fiancée kissing a stagehand, he becomes very protective of Dennis and at first tries to keep him from finding out. But when Dennis decides maybe it would be best if he splits up with Simone, Andy reveals the truth about her. Devastated, Dennis stops in the middle of the first performance of the pantomime to berate the futility of his life and the lack of enthusiasm from the audience.

Samuel L. Jackson is starring as a maverick American cop in Fatal Error, a British police film and a fellow extra (Steve Speirs) forfeits the opportunity to do a scene with Jackson, to Andy's benefit. The fellow extra tells Andy tragic stories about people whom he has known. When he uses the favour he did for Andy to pressure him into being his friend, Andy resorts to lies and excuses to try to shake him off. Due to the man's insistence, Andy caves in and agrees to have dinner with him, though Andy feels obliged to assure the other restaurant patrons that he and his dinner companion are not a couple. The man's demeanour proves to be too much, so a frustrated Andy twice plunges his face into his soup after being invited to the Ben Elton musical We Will Rock You, before abruptly leaving.

Maggie is attracted to a young mixed race actor, Dan (Michael Wildman). Despite some initial misunderstandings due to her over-sensitivity about race, she successfully asks him out on a date, but when he sees her try to hide her golliwog, he ends the date early. When she chats with Jackson on set the day after, she confuses him with Laurence Fishburne. Andy tries to save the ailing conversation but instead makes things significantly worse, resulting in Andy forfeiting the line he had earlier managed to get with Jackson.

Andy and Maggie are working on a production of Shakespeare's The Tempest alongside Patrick Stewart. Eager to get his sitcom script noticed, Andy gives a copy to Stewart, who in turn tells Andy about his own script: a lewd film in which he will star as a man who can undress women with his mind. Stewart agrees to circulate Andy's script, and the BBC invite Andy for a meeting.

Maggie appears as an extra in a courtroom drama with Orlando Bloom and Sophia Myles. Bloom arrogantly refuses to believe that Maggie does not find him attractive and repeatedly voices his dislike of Johnny Depp.

Andy receives a bit part in a new fantasy film starring Daniel Radcliffe, who fancies himself a teenage Romeo and tries to seduce every woman he meets – including Maggie, and then blaming it on someone else every time he gets caught. Over lunch, Daniel invites himself to join Andy and Maggie and accidentally flicks a condom onto the head of Dame Diana Rigg.

Andy makes a charity appeal video and meets Chris Martin from Coldplay, who appears as a shameless self-promoter interested only in advertising his album. Martin requests to make a cameo on When the Whistle Blows and appears on the show to play "Fix You" despite Andy insisting against it. Despite angry reviews at the shameless celebrity appearance on his sitcom, Andy is nominated for a BAFTA. Through the misendeavours of agent Darren and friend Maggie, Andy manages to upset both Richard Briers and Patricia Potter, an ex-girlfriend, who goes on to humiliate him from the stage.

Convinced that he has outgrown his sitcom and his agent, Andy becomes detached from his friends after appearing on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross and becoming friends with Ross. Andy is also getting very sick of Darren's incompetence and sets him a task: find a way for him to meet Robert De Niro or be fired.

Despite making excuses, Andy is coerced into visiting a boy who is in hospital with cancer and asks Maggie to go with him. Robert Lindsay, who appeared on the Ross show with Andy, is incensed that he, the more famous and talented actor (according to him), was not asked to visit the ailing child and gate-crashes the scheduled visit. Lindsay becomes livid when the sick child shows no recognition of Lindsay's earlier work, especially his appearances as Wolfie on 1970s sitcom Citizen Smith.

After three series of When the Whistle Blows, Andy is more famous than ever. He can get a table at the exclusive Ivy Restaurant without booking, and he's moved to a posh new flat on Hampstead Heath as well. However, Andy is still not happy with his life, especially as his arch-nemesis Greg has got the high-brow roles and critical respect Andy wants. With a new blockbuster film opening to rave reviews, Greg's portrayal of Percy Shelley alongside Clive Owen's Byron has earned him a firm place on the A-list. Fortunately, Greg's agent offers to represent Andy as well, which means Andy can finally hand Darren Lamb his walking papers – or at least leave a message to that effect.

Andy's new agent Tre Cooper's plans to get Andy "to the top of the B-list" as soon as possible, however Andy refuses to resort to appearing on red carpets and being photographed with a famous girl on his arm. Things are made worse when Andy's attempt to appear sophisticated during an interview backfire leaving him looking foolish. Andy also completely fails to notice things aren't going nearly as well for Maggie. Although Tre secures her a small part in Clive Owen's new film, she decides to stop being an extra after Owen and the director come up with a bit of staging that involves Owen flinging manure in Maggie's face. With no experience in any other line of work, Maggie has to resort to being a cleaner to pay the rent, which she can no longer afford and so is forced to move from her flat to a dingy little bedsit. Since Andy now phones only when he needs her to help him with some scheme or other, Maggie is left entirely to her own devices. Nearly destitute and thoroughly despondent, she pops in at Darren's new (and former) employer, the Carphone Warehouse, to see if he can offer her a place alongside former EastEnders co-stars Shaun Williamson and Dean Gaffney, who have also resorted to working there.

With a decent agent on board, Andy abruptly quits his sitcom which infuriates the head of BBC Comedy. Although he expects himself to be inundated with acting offers, he instead finds himself with even less work than he had before he fired Darren. Tre won't return his calls, so Andy is forced to accept acting gigs that he sneered at only a few months ago (specifically, roles on Doctor Who and Hotel Babylon) just to keep himself in the public eye. Andy finally manages to track down his agent, who tells Andy that he will never be able to have the career he wants and forces him to choose between either "fame and fortune" or "integrity and respect," but not both together. Andy chooses fame and fortune and begs Tre to pull whatever strings are necessary in order to get him back on television.

Andy finds that the strings Tre has offered to pull land him in the latest cast of Celebrity Big Brother, but Andy has no idea who anybody else is (apart from Lionel Blair); the other house members include June Sarpong, Lisa Scott-Lee, X-Factor finalist Chico Slimani, a woman who leaked a sex tape of herself on the Internet, and a mother whose son was murdered. He quickly realises that by appearing on a show where everyone is so desperate for fame that they voluntarily "hand in their dignity at the door", rather than bolster his career, what he's actually done is just the opposite. After making an impassioned speech to this effect on camera, at the same time using the opportunity to make a heartfelt and tearful apology to Maggie, who is watching at home, Andy walks off the show.