The show was a spin-off from a one-off 90-minute television film There's a Hole in Your Dustbin, Delilah (1968) written by Jack Rosenthal and directed by Michael Apted.

Cheese and Egg, Heavy Breathing, Winston Platt and Eric are the crew of dustcart 'Thunderbird 3' of the Corporation Cleansing Department—the name a reference to the spacecraft in Thunderbirds.

Heavy Breathing, "the one with the good looks", is obliged to spend much of his time pleasuring housewives – something he finds quite annoying when he would prefer to be resting.

Welsh Eric, the more sensitive Coronation Street-fan, spends most of the time talking about television and saving to buy a colour TV for his mother.

Coronation Street was mentioned a few times by Eric; Graham Haberfield, aka Winston once played Jerry Booth in the show.

Jack Rosenthal left the show to concentrate on developing another Granada sitcom, The Lovers, which co-starred Paula Wilcox.

In 1988 Brian Wilde starred with Trevor Bannister in the BBC1 show Wyatt's Watchdogs, a short-lived sitcom about bickering neighbours trying to run a Neighbourhood Watch scheme.