The playwright Peter Nichols, in his autobiography, was at pains to point out that he was in reality rather less successful than his friend Charles Wood, who based leading characters in this comedy series on the two of them, but depicted "Gordon Maple" (Wood himself) as a struggling failure and "Tom Lawrence" (Nichols) as enormously rich and acclaimed.
Many people believed that this comedy series was inspired by writer Charles Wood's own adventures as a busy scriptwriter in films from the mid-60s on, and that he was himself the inspiration for the character of "Gordon Maple".
It was popularly supposed that the character of "Tom Lawrence" in the series was based on Charles Wood's friend and neighbor (and fellow-playwright) Peter Nichols.