The New Statesman

The show emerged from a 1985 meeting at an Independent Broadcasting Authority comedy symposium, where Rik Mayall, writers Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, and Yorkshire Television's Vernon Lawrence first discussed the idea, though Marks and Gran initially declined due to a prior negative experience working with an alternative comedian on Roll Over Beethoven.

The project only got moving after Mayall, Marks and Gran happened to appear on the same episode of Wogan months later, prompting them to finally decide to collaborate.

The series was originally going to be called The B'Stard File, but this title was rejected by the broadcasting authority; other rejected titles proposed by Mayall included The Member and The New MEMBER, both deemed too explicit, before he settled on The New Statesman.

To research the role, Rik Mayall visited the House of Commons following the announcement of the 1987 United Kingdom general election.

The series was recorded in front of a live audience at the Yorkshire Television studio in Leeds.

Rowena Cooper, who played the character Norman/Norma Bormann undergoing a sex change across series 1, was credited under the ambiguous name 'R. R. Cooper' in all but one episode specifically to keep her character's gender uncertain to viewers.

Following Rik Mayall's death on June 9, 2014, the show's producers wrote a fictional obituary killing off Alan B'Stard on the same date, revealing among other things that his fifth wife was Lady Gaga and that his true birth date was February 29.

A 2006 stage play adaptation had B'Stard defect to Labour and become close to Tony Blair while hunting for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction supposedly hidden at BBC headquarters; a 2007 version was altered to reflect Gordon Brown becoming Prime Minister, and Mike Sherman played B'Stard in place of an ill Rik Mayall.

In 2017, Marks and Gran pitched a sequel titled The B'Stard Legacy, following Alan's son Arron, but ITV declined to air it for fear it would flop, and the project was scrapped.