For the first week of filming, Jim Dale and Peter Butterworth were not speaking to one another, even though they had the majority of scenes together. Unbeknownst to either of them, at the start of shooting, Kenneth Williams had told Peter Butterworth that Jim Dale 'hated his guts' and he then told Dale the same thing about Butterworth. Eventually a suspicious Dale asked Butterworth on set, if Williams had said anything to him and they discovered what had happened, whilst Williams stood nearby laughing at them.
Phil Silvers replaced Sidney James in the role of Sgt. Nocker, which had been originally written for James; it turned out that James could not do the film due to commitments on George and the Dragon (1966). About two weeks into the filming of this picture James suffered a mild heart attack.
Filming of the Sahara Desert scenes took place on Camber Sands; ironically, filming was actually halted at one point because it was snowing. However, Gerald Thomas told cameraman Alan Hume to put a yellow filter on the camera and pretended it was a sandstorm(!)
Phil Silvers was paid £30,000 for his role, making him by far, the highest paid star in the history of the series, which provoked a great deal of animosity among the regular Carry On team.
The location filming took three weeks, the longest in Carry On history.