I'm sure she didn't mean it, but it is the moment where true fiction is more real than reality. Mrs. Merton interviewed real guests in front of an audience recruited from the real local home for the elderly. Apparently not all the American guests, who included Tammy Wynette, Tony Curtis and Bo Derek, realized that the host wasn't quite real. People brought in to fill out the audience didn't get the gag either. Snappy banter, with every exchange setting up a joke, had to go.
Nobody speaks like that. . . .
Laughs can hinge on something as subtle as the way a character turns her head. Aherne in person exhibits little of the subtlety of the show that came out of her head. She's so far oblivious to the Hollywood culture of positive spin. The journey to a U.S. remake wasn't smooth. With William Morris agent Ben Silverman helping Aherne and Cash make the rounds, however, Sony's Columbia TriStar Television eventually acquired it and sold a pilot to CBS, where, with Randy Quaid playing the lounger-bound father, it is a candidate for the fall schedule.