- How old is Bernard supposed to be? He's portrayed as callow and naive, but is obviously in his mid forties at the beginning of the show's run (and if Actor-Shared Background holds with him as is does for Hacker and Sir Humphrey, he shares Derek Fowlds' 1937 birthdate). The only explanation I can think of is that it was a midlife career change, but that's never hinted at in the show.
- According to the novelisations, Bernard is supposed to be in his late twenties-early thirties and a rising young star in the Civil Service building his career fresh from university. So it is a variation of Dawson Casting. The poorer picture quality of television sets and broadcasts in the 1980s did much to hide the actor's real age.
- All three of the principal characters are married, but none of them ever wear wedding rings. This could be an oversight, or simply a cultural norm from the Eighties.
- It's reflective of a cultural norm; married men wearing wedding rings, while not completely unheard of back then, was less of a practice in the 1980s (and certainly so in the 1960s and 1970s, when the main characters would likely have gotten married to begin with).
- It's still not the cultural norm in the UK. A recent survey by a large jewellery concern found that only 45% of married English men wear a wedding ring
- It's reflective of a cultural norm; married men wearing wedding rings, while not completely unheard of back then, was less of a practice in the 1980s (and certainly so in the 1960s and 1970s, when the main characters would likely have gotten married to begin with).
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