Alan Bennett based the elderly couple on his parents, "except that the wife is more querulous than my mother and the husband less gentle than my father. But much of their language is the same, and their attitudes".
Almost every member of the credited cast (apart from Bob Peck) also appeared in Coronation Street (1960) at one time or another.
Alan Bennett's father died unexpectedly between scripting and filming, occasioning much soul-searching, but his mother was more forthright: "They're from Leeds and we're from Leeds, but that's as far as it went. Mind you, it was grand seeing Morecambe."