To the Manor Born new Lord of the Manor is Richard DeVere, a recently widowed self-made millionaire who started his career on an East End fruit barrow and founded the "Cavendish Foods" supermarket chain, who to Audrey is simply a "grocer". DeVere brings his domineering mother, who is soon nicknamed by Audrey 'Mrs. Poo', her full name being Maria Jaroslava Vladimira Martinka Polouvicka. She reveals to Audrey, who does not like foreigners, that she and her son came to Britain in 1939 from Czechoslovakia, and that Richard, whose real name is Bedrich Polouvicek, is half-Polish (on his late father Lazlo's side) and half-Czechoslovakian. Mrs.
To the Manor Born the programmes that Spence wrote for featured a Cockney comedian, who had recently bought a manor house in an English country village. When holding a housewarming party, the comedian invited the previous occupant, a widow who could not afford to keep the house up and had moved to a smaller house in the village. The comedian's account of the lady, and the conversation he had with her, Spence later described as a "perfect description" of Audrey. A few years later, following the success of "The Good Life", Spence was asked by BBC Radio to come up with an idea for