Both women had first met at Manchester Polytechnic in 1970, Wood was hoping to enroll, and Walters was coming to the end of her course.

[1] Wood had been initially spotted by Granada's head of drama, Peter Eckersley, performing in her self-written play Talent at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre, who asked her to recreate it for television (his widow is actress Anne Reid, who would appear as Jean in Wood's 1998 sitcom dinnerladies).

[5] For the series a year later, the 'Two Creatures Great and Small' adjunct had been dropped, as critics commenting on Wood's weight had been beginning to get to her[6] (though she did also say later she was delighted that she was once described as "dominating the stage like a witty tank").

[8] The studio audience was generally filled with pensioners who often had difficulty understanding Wood's refined humour.

Rik Mayall also appeared in a one-off monologue as a chauvinistic feminist called Mitch, filling a similar guest slot as he had with Kevin Turvey in the sketch show A Kick Up the Eighties.

[12] Around this time, Wood made a weekly musical appearance in the BBC Radio 2 show The Little and Large Party, narrated an Arts Council film on the pantomime dame, and was profiled in the schools programme Scene.

Although consisting of seven episodes, the seventh in the series was a compilation of sketches and songs pulled from the earlier six parts and the pilot.