Emma Thompson, Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry, who play the contestants from the fictional "Footlights College, Oxbridge", were all in Cambridge University's Footlights Club together. The fourth member of the team is played by Ben Elton, who went to Manchester University instead. The characters are shown as upper class stereotypes who talk about walking straight into top jobs such as Director-General of the BBC or Chairman of British Rail, so here the name "Footlights" implies privilege. At the time, a lot of the biggest names in British comedy had been Footlights Club members. Fry, Laurie and Thompson soon went to become household names in Britain.
At the time, Alexei Sayle resented the fact that this episode featured Cambridge and Oxford University alumni Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson, Mel Smith and Griff Rhys-Jones because he saw them as part of the establishment, whereas The Young Ones was a product of the alternative comedy movement. He felt this meant the show was becoming mainstream.
Rik Mayall provided the voice of Special Patrol Group, Vyvyan's pet hamster.
Griff Rhys-Jones played Bamber Gascoigne before. In a University Challenge (1962) parody sketch in Not the Nine O'Clock News (1979). Mel Smith also appears in the episode as a security guard at the Grenada TV show.
The brown thing in front of Vyvyan during the University Challenge scene is a stack of bacon sandwiches. Presumably he has just killed the pig (named "Bacon Sandwich") he brought along as a mascot and made these sandwiches from it.