The play was broadcast two years after it was recorded. It was intended that it be transmitted in the normal way in 1962, but it was withdrawn at the last minute after fears that it would cause offence; for some time, it was said to have been banned. The play deliberately explored the boundaries of bad taste and black comedy. In one scene, for example, a witness's pronounced stammer is cruelly mocked by a barrister; however, the main cause of concern was to do with the details of a series of gruesome operations conducted on healthy patients by the eponymous Dr. Fancy.
Though produced in 1962, the story is set in the year 1966.