Only five of the planned six shows from the first season were produced when Channel 4 decided that "Back to Normal With Eddie Monsoon" (also referred to as "An evening With Eddie Monsoon" by some sources) was unsuitable for broadcast. The character was revived in the second season episode "Eddie Monsoon: A Life" and featured Adrian Edmondson in the title role as the washed-up South African television host. The name Eddie Monsoon is, of course, a pun on the name Edmondson. Many years later, Edmondson's real-life wife Jennifer Saunders resurrected the name Eddie (short for Edina) Monsoon for her character in the sitcom Absolutamente Fabulosas (1992).
According to Dawn French, Rik Mayall once found out that she and Jennifer Saunders were being paid less than their male colleagues, so he called a meeting of the Comic Strip team and threatened to quit unless equality was established.
In the early episodes, the map in the title sequence was of a section of north Dorset and southern Wiltshire, centred on the town of Shaftesbury.
The final episode of the first series was to have been a spoof chat show called Back to Normal with Eddie Monsoon (referred to as An Evening with Eddie Monsoon by some sources). It was never produced, as it was considered too vulgar even for the "alternative" Channel 4, and contained material that was possibly libellous. The script-which, uniquely for the Comic Strip, was written as a collaboration by the entire cast-was later published, along with the rest of the series, in book form.
Keith Allen didn't get on with many of his colleagues, as they found him a bit difficult. He was a bit of a maverick who wasn't keen on being associated with the group. He and Peter Richardson had a choppy working relationship. Richardson said that they would typically have one blazing row per film, and even assemble rival edits during post-production when they couldn't agree on the final cut.