During more than thirty years in a variety of houses, Bob Sharpe managed to rise from garden boy to valet and butler. As a boy he had to kill pheasant chicks, boil rabbits for the estate dogs, carry the wood up and down stairs every day for thirty fires and sleep on the floor outside his master's room. He cleaned shoes, ironed underwear and socks and once had to stand all night in the hall waiting for a late visitor to arrive. But as a butler he was the best paid servant in the house, waited on, feared and respected by the other servants. Bob Sharpe knew the real world of upstairs downstairs and the secrets of the landed gentry - even to the point of incest and attempted murder!