The inspiration for the original version was a character from the MASH Goes To books, a Russian opera singer named Boris Alexandrovitch Korsky-Rimsakov, a backdooring bastard of the first, second and quite possibly third water.
I envisaged an imposing bearded figure with a rich baritone and an unctuous manner that would almost cause women's underwear to slide themselves down, and was more than slightly bemused when an acquaintance claimed the character was based on him.
He did not appear to have any difficulty with that, so the character changed slightly to fit that supposition. Of course, I realize that he's probably changed his mind over the intervening period, and I'll have to change them back.
At that stage he'll probably disappear completely, and be replaced by someone entirely different
Readers may well have suspicions about the identities of Olga and Bernelle, and I can categorically state that there aren't any, at least not in a mother and daughter combination.
You could find the prototype for Bernelle in a couple of blonde students in Hughesy's classes over the years, but if you're looking for my actual model I'd point the reader towards a Jean Kitson character from the mid-eighties The Big Gig (if anyone remembers Candida) who has sort of morphed into someone with a strong physical resemblance to, say, Lara Bingle. If there are any ex-students who now resemble that amalgam I'd like to have met them, say, twenty years ago.
Olga, to the best of my knowledge or recollection, is entirely fictional,.
The northern European extraction is necessary to throw in the requisite genetic material that produces the daughter.
It also provides the possibility for the daughter to change her name by deed poll from Bernelle Butler to Marilyn Mundsen, since Mundsen is Mum’s maiden name.