Directed by Richard Lester, it starred Sellers, Milligan, Valentine Dyall, Kenneth Connor and Graham Stark – principal contributors it shared with The Idiot Weekly, Price 2d, a comedy show which had finished only a month before.

The "Ying Tong Song", written by Milligan, served as the show's opening theme, and became a hit on the UK Singles Chart when released in September 1956.

[2] Reviewing the programme in the Daily Mirror, Clifford Davis described it as "the most meaningless, weird, un-funny piffle ever to have been perpetrated on TV".

Kenneth Baily of The People described it as "a new approach to TV fun" and "just as original as the Goons and radio's inimitable It's That Man Again".

[4] Thomas's comments were echoed by Truth's Bernard Levin, who noted that the show had been "hailed in many quarters as not only the funniest thing that has ever been seen on television, but as the first programmes to exploit the full resources of the newest medium in a manner which owes nothing to the methods of any older one".