The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer

Michael Rimmer honeymoons in a town called Budleigh Moore, a reference to Peter Cook's comedy partner Dudley Moore.

Sir Eric Bentley is inspired by the late British Conservative politician Enoch Powell, who made the famous "Rivers of Blood" speech about immigration to the UK. Bentley repeats a piece of gossip about an old lady from an embarrassingly unreliable source - much as Powell had. Bentley mentions Powell by name at the end of the speech.

The mysterious and diabolical character played by Peter Cook may be seen as an unaffectionate parody of the film's executive producer, David Frost. Frost was once said to have "risen without trace", which is more or less what Rimmer does in the film; he achieves fame via television much as Frost did in the early 1960s; he becomes influential in politics as Frost allegedly sought to do with his famous "power breakfasts"; and, the most obvious resemblance, he is seen sitting in a hanging chair of the type known as an "orange bomb", exactly like the much-photographed one which Frost had in his home. Peter Cook - who once said that the only thing he really regretted in his life was saving Frost from drowning - acknowledged that Frost had been quite peeved by the resemblances in the portrait of Rimmer.

The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer, began being written in 1967 and completed filming June 30, 1969. But the film studio deemed the content controversial for release on an election year. According to the Kevin Billington commentary "it was held for an entire year" until after the July '70 election. In the meantime, John Cleese and Graham Chapman who had worked on the film were now on TV with Monty Python. SO, not knowing if the film they had spent so much time making would ever be released, they wrote the nineteenth Python show Monty Python's Flying Circus: It's a Living (1970); including a sketch called "Election Night Special". The sketch is a blatant remake of the election results scene from the Michael Rimmer film (which Cleese and Chapman wrote), in which silly names like Alderman Poot are made even more ridiculous. The Python sketch was aired 3 Nov 1970 , nine days before the film was finally released 12 Nov 1970.

Michael Rimmer is said to be a spoof of the life of David Frost. Frost was in fact a producer of the film, under the pseudonym of David Paradine. David Frost's middle name is Paradine. John Cleese and Graham Chapman had previously worked on The Frost Report (1966) with him.