The Rat Race is the 1980s creation of Margaret Thatcher's Britain. Paul, who has just graduated and wants to be a writer, faces overwhelming pressure to 'get on' and join the Rat Race, in sharp contrast to the alternative lifestyle he wants to live. Pretty soon he finds himself on the scrapheap and having to compromise his beliefs in order to make something of himself. Rat Race is one year in his life, charting his fluctuating fortunes, set against the backdrop of the music and fashion of the time. It is also a love story, as he meets and falls in love with the girl of his dreams, Emma, and all the trials and tribulations that brings with it. Rat Race is an alternative view of growing up in the 1980s, a savage indictment of the Thatcher regime and the pressures on the young to achieve at any cost in the get-rich-quick society in which they find themselves.