Today's the day that the custody of Clare's son will be decided. Her son loves gorillas, but lawyers think they belong in a zoo. So does Clare's estranged husband, but he's the man who's ordered a singing valentine for his computer. It's a dilemma for any self-respecting lawyer.
Vicki has picked today to throw her tow-timing boyfriend out on the street. She's feeling bitter - definitely the wrong flavour for her valentine sideline...a "food of love" chocolate covered strawberry stall.
And Joy, the reluctant recruit from the opera school, looks like Tootsie and talks like the voice of doom. While Clare wants her son, and Vicki wants her boyfriend run out of town, Joy just wants out.
And although they don't know it, their landlord wants them all out, and he's perpared to destroy the Company in the progress.
To top it all off, a doberman has fallen in love with Clare's gorilla costume.
The action skates over a landscape reminiscent of London after the blitz. It's Wellington, the windy capital of New Zealand in the throes of a building boom. What's not on the way up is on the way down - fast - except for the Voice of Wellington who is simply over the top. DJ Chris Dean is a one-man crusade against romance and valentines, spreading his meassage of cynicism and misogyny over the airwaves of Wellington.
But Chris has one love - his missing dog - and he'll give anything to get her back. There's a price on the head of Hermione the doberman, and the mayhem of the Send A Gorilla daily routine turns to madness as unscrupulous bounty-hunters track the truant dog.
Poor Clare. How can she deliver gorilla-grams when she's dogged by a doberman who's being dogged by dognappers? And how is she to deliver a gorilla-gram on top of a high rise building project without looking like a re-make of King Kong?
How can Vicki put her heart into selling food-of-love strawberries when she has emotional indigestion?
How can Joy ever face the opera school again after being caught singing a Tosca-gram to a diva.
If, as Shakespeare says, music be the food of love, these people are singing the wrong tune.
