The first time in eight years that Victoria Wood and regular collaborator Susie Blake had worked together; they previously worked together in Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV (1985), Victoria Wood (1989) and Victoria Wood's All Day Breakfast (1992).
The white and blue windowpane check gown Honeysuckle Weeks wears as Alice Cottisloe in "Plots and Proposals" when she answers the door is the same costume Billie Piper (Fanny Price) wears in Mansfield Park (2007), Rosamund Stephen (Henrietta Musgrove) wears in Persuasão (2007), Vicki Hopkins wears in The Regency House Party (2004), and Emma Thompson wears in Razão e Sensibilidade (1995). The same costume is also worn in Byron (2003) by an extra at the London party where Byron meets Annabella Milbanke.
Victoria Wood imitates the then shadow Home Secretary, Ann Widdecombe, in a memorable song named after the latter. The following year, both Wood and Widdecombe appeared as guests on Parkinson (1971), in which Widdecombe stated she enjoyed Wood's impersonation of her.
The show was described by a BBC News Online writer in 2000 as "the centrepiece of BBC One's Christmas Day schedules". Victoria Wood responded, "it's a very strange feeling-but it's got to be someone, hasn't it?"
The show was made straight after Victoria Wood had finished work on dinnerladies (1998). She said, "I was worn out from doing dinnerladies and it took me a long time to recover. It was great to do but it was very draining...the last 10 Dinnerladies I did in a really, really short time and I was ill at one point. This Christmas special was much easier to write because it was in bits."