Sascha and The Butch, the musical duo that play in the Palace Beer Garden, have real life models, though to the best of my knowledge those models have never actually performed together. There was the possibility of a Herston-Sascha-Boris The Backdooring Bastard tussle for Bernelle's affections that was shelved so that Boris could host a sea-borne party (because someone needed to).
Speaking of Boris the Backdooring Bastard, his original inclusion was meant to add a degree of three-way intrigue to the musical beds side of things, and 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 without nonpareil. 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 which 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 possibly 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, about twelve years ago.
Olga, to the best of my knowledge, is entirely fictional and the northern European extraction is necessary to throw in the requisite genetic material that produces the daughter and to provide the possibility that the daughter may opt to change her name from Bernelle Butler to Marilyn Mundsen, since Mundsen is Mum’s maiden name.
As major players in the musical beds tug of war, The Terrible Twins needed an occupation that would allow them to appear and disappear from the stage, and the publication schedule of the local paper worked nicely. They obviously needed to work together, and regular shift work, with it's week by week schedule didn't quite fit. The Twins journalistic role could also have added another plot line to the developing intrigue, and while that didn't turn up this tome, it's always a possibility in a sequel.
The reader may also find an obvious model for D’Artagnan, who I see as the epitome of the temperamental and highly opinionated French chef. Since he’s working in a country pub the guy’s probably not going to be a real chef, but would probably try to make up for a lack of formal qualifications by insisting that there was a particular way in which things should be done, a character trait that would bring him into frequent conflict with an assertive supervisor with her own version of those issues.