Fisheries expert Alfred Jones (Ewan McGregor) receives an email from financial adviser Harriet Chetwode-Talbot (Emily Blunt), seeking advice on a project to bring salmon fishing to the Yemen—a project being bankrolled by a wealthy Yemeni sheikh and supported by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Alfred dismisses the project as "fundamentally unfeasible" because Yemen cannot provide the necessary environment for salmon. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom's press secretary Patricia Maxwell (Kristin Scott Thomas) suggests the salmon fishing story to the Prime Minister's office as a positive story to help improve relations between Britain and the Islamic world.