Editing Up Pompeii! (section)

==Background==
''Up Pompeii!'' first appeared in the    ''[[Comedy Playhouse]]'' series, after [[Michael Mills (British producer)|Michael Mills]] and [[Tom Sloan (broadcaster)|Tom Sloan]] from BBC Comedy and Light Entertainment visited the ruins of [[Pompeii]]. Since Mills had recently seen Frankie Howerd in the stage musical ''[[A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum]]'' he casually remarked to Sloan that he half expected Howerd to suddenly appear round the corner. Sloan had replied 'Why not?', and the idea took root. Talbot Rothwell was invited to write a script and the designer Sally Hulke visited [[Pompeii]] with a sketch book and camera to ensure realism and authenticity.<ref>Radio Times, 25 March 1971</ref>

A slight variation of this is related by [[Bill Cotton]] who, in a June 2000 interview with author Graham McCann, said the idea originated with Mills, then the BBC's Head of Comedy, after seeing Frankie Howerd in that same play.<ref name="Cull">Nicholas J. Cull "Infamy! Infamy!" in Sandra R. Joshel (et al., eds.) [https://books.google.com/books?id=H3NCIYRRIVUC&pg=PA181&lpg=PA180 ''Imperial Projections: Ancient Rome in Modern Popular Culture''], Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005 [2001], pp.180–81</ref>

There were concerns in the Corporation's copyright department that the parallels between the musical and the comedy series might lead to litigation over possible plagiarism, but Rothwell told the BBC that he had seen neither the stage musical nor its film adaptation.<ref name="Cull" />