Paul McCartney allowed his music to be used because he is a Steve Coogan fan, and agreed to it after coming backstage at one of Coogan's comedy shows.
The character Peter Linehan, head of News and Current Affairs at the BBC, is named for Graham Linehan, who appears in one of the episodes as an RTE exec.
Title reference: A Room with a View (1985).
Among the laughably bad ideas for TV programs that Alan pitches to BBC executive Tony Hayers is "Cooking in Prison". In 2012, Channel 4 broadcast the series Ramsay Behind Bars (2012), where Gordon Ramsay visited a prison to teach inmates how to cook. Another of Alan's bad ideas is "Youth Hostelling with Chris Eubank". In 2015, Chris Eubank filmed an advert for the hostel-booking website Hostelworld. Although in this case the advert was actually inspired by this line (this was acknowledged in the description of the advert's official Youtube video), which had entered the public consciousness along with many other Alan Partridge quotes.