A Cock and Bull Story depicts Steve Coogan playing himself as an arrogant actor with low self esteem and a complicated love life. Coogan is playing the eponymous role in an adaptation of Tristram Shandy being filmed at a stately home. He constantly spars with actor Rob Brydon, who is playing Uncle Toby, and believes his role to be of equal importance to Coogan's, calling himself the...

A Cock and Bull Story depicts Steve Coogan playing himself as an arrogant actor with low self esteem and a complicated love life. Coogan is playing the eponymous role in an adaptation of Tristram Shandy being filmed at a stately home. He constantly spars with actor Rob Brydon, who is playing Uncle Toby, and believes his role to be of equal importance to Coogan's, calling himself the "co-lead". The film incorporates several sequences from Tristram Shandy. Not all of these are actually part of the film-within-the-film. The latter are limited to the story of Tristram's conception, birth and christening; Uncle Toby's experiences at the Battle of Namur; and Tristram's sudden and accidental circumcision at the age of three. In addition to these, Uncle Toby's wooing of Widow Wadnam (Gillian Anderson) takes place in a sequence dreamed by Steve Coogan; and, after the cast and crew have viewed the "completed" film, ending with Walter Shandy fainting at the sight of his wife giving birth, the question "How does the book end?" is followed by the concluding scene of the novel, in which Yorick says "It is a story about a Cock and a Bull - and the best of its kind that ever I heard!" (Yorick is not in the actual film-within-the-film; in this scene he is played by Stephen Fry, who appears elsewhere in the film as Patrick, a scholarly talking-head.)