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(theme music playing)
Manuel Towers, how are you?
He's pickled the onions
and he's smashed the eggs in his cups
under the table.
Anything in trousers, yes, or out of them preferably.
Don't touch me, I don't know where you've been.
Yes, yes, we must have our little jokes, mustn't we?
Yes, we must, mustn't we?
My god you're ugly, aren't you.
Hello.
Three decades ago
a television situation comedy premiered on the BBC
that would set a high watermark
carrying forward into the 21st century.
In 2000 the British Film Institute named it
the number one sitcom of all time.
The series of course is "Fawlty Towers".
Arguably its genius will never be surpassed.
I'm Andrew Sachs, and it was my great good fortune
to have the ongoing role of Manuel
in the two seasons and 12 episodes--
That's right, there were only ever 12 episodes--
that compromised the series.
Oink, oink, oink!
Oh, don't look at me
with those awful cow eyes.
A burro is--
Hee-haw!
¶ For the price I got to pay. ¶
(rhythmic foot-stomping)
In this program we'll celebrate an iconic television series
and meet many of the cast and crew who made it
including first season producer/director
John Howard Davis
who will offer backstage insights.
And we'll hear at length from the co-creator
and star of the series
my very dear friend John Cleese.
Like its predecessor, "Monty Python's Flying Circus"
"Fawlty Towers" bears watching over and over again
and its ardent fans
revel in reciting memorable bits.
- Que? - They're Germans. Don't mention the war.
- Que? - Don't mention the war.
I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it all right.
- Que? - I'm so sorry. He's from Barcelona.
We're training him, he's from Barcelona.
In Spain.
(speaks Spanish) - Que?
What happens, of course,
is that of course dear Manuel
says "Que?" a lot 'cause he has no idea what's going on.
It was never intended to be a catch phrase
because what else would he say?
You see what I mean?
But sometimes I think we realize that "I am from Barcelona."
kind of got funnier with repetition.
It's rather interesting. He's from Barcelona.
And one of the more--
He's from Barcelona.
I am from Barcelona.
If you actually think what single word
was used most often
in "Fawlty Towers" it was "What?"
Or "What?"
- What? - What?
- What?! - Que?
When it premiered on American public television stations
"Fawlty Towers" brought peals of laughter
to a viewing office jaded by formulaic American sitcoms.
America for example, people accept it was a bit of writing
and performing like any other performance.
And I think it's because I caught something
about the British character that was so essential
to a certain kind of lower middle class
conglomeration of attitudes
That it struck home
and caused me to be identified
with this wretched character, this awful man, ever since.
"Fawlty Towers".
Such a splendid place.
So many remarkable qualities.
So very many reasons
why one would want to book in there.
At the beginning of course with the loving couple
that owned and ran it--
Basil and Sybil Fawlty.
I'm fed up with you,
you rancorous coiffured old sow!
Why don't you syringe the doughnuts out of your ear
and get some sense into the dormant organ
you keep hidden in that rat's maze of yours.
I have had it up to here with you.
Have you?
You never get it right, do you?
You're either crawling all over them,
licking their boots,
Or spitting poison at them like some benzedrine puff adder.
Do you really imagine even in your wildest dreams
that a girl like this could possibly be interested
in an aging brilliantine
stick insect like you?
I would find it a little easier to cope
with some of the cretins we get in here,
my little nest of vipers,
if I got a smidgen of cooperation from you.
"My little nest of vipers". I always liked that.
It was funny. You never really minded
the things that Basil said to Sybil
because she was never hurt by them.
If she'd been hurt by them, then it wouldn't have worked.
In their years of building up custom at Fawlty Towers,
Basil and Sybil built on individual gifts
towards collective perfection.
One of Sybil's gifts
is her being so at ease with her guests.
Shall I deal with this, Basil? I'm dealing with it, dear.
No dear, that's all right. Now you wanted two singles?
- I said I'd deal with it. - Do you mind sharing a bathroom?
I was here first.
Well, it's my turn now then.
Good evening, mr. Johnson.
Evening. Any messages?
Three, I think.
Three? Everybody wants you, don't they?
I wouldn't say that.
Oh, well, you're only single once.
Basil: Twice can be arranged.
Sybil wasn't based on any particular person.
I think I got the voice from one lady
I'd met in the catering business.
I've known Pru Scales for years.
And we got into the studio and she arrived on the set
in her makeup and her clothes,
and I just completely collapsed with laughter.
She just looked so extraordinary.
The whole look and makeup
and costume and so on,
it was an amalgam of various people.
Look, I forgot to ask,
any news on that room for my mother? - Oh, yes,
number 16 has decided to stay, I'm afraid.
I tried a couple of other places for you,
but everywhere's full at the moment. - Oh well, no hassle,
she won't mind sharing with me. - Lucky mum.
I think it was my idea that she should be
Less grand than he was,
less posh, as we say in this country,
than he.
And that would be the basis of their relationship originally,
that she was from a catering family,
that perhaps her family,
her parents had run a small boarding house
in a regional town like Eastbourne or somewhere.
And she was perhaps working as a barmaid.
Excuse me,
there are no nuts here, Sybil.
No nuts!
You'll find them in the kitchen. Ha!
I think her whole focus
in terms of hotel management
is professional, you know.
"Where are we going to find the money
to pay the next bills when they come in?"
And "How can we persuade these clients to stay
instead of leaving?"
And "How can I make my husband behave well enough
not to-- close down the--
Close down the whole concern?"
- I told them to leave. - You told them to leave?
Well, how was I supposed to know?!
Why didn't you tell me, you halfwit?
Why didn't they tell me?! You can't blame me for this!
Go and tell them they can stay.
- Why don't you tell them? - I didn't tell them to go.
I suppose it's all my fault, isn't it?
- Go and tell them. Now. - No, I won't.
- You will. - Oh, no I won't.
- Oh, yes you will. - Oh, yes I will.
Right. Leave it to me.
Let me explain, my little work horse.
The guests and I have been having a bit of an old chin wag
and the upshot of it all is they're off.
- Off? - Well, let me put it this way, dear.
Either they go or I go.
Right, come back in,
my wife's had a better idea.
Come on back. I'm going instead!
We had a different conception of the character
from the way Pru played it at the first read-through.
And I remember going home and saying to Connie,
"What do you think about the way Pru's playing it?"
"Well, it's not what we thought of."
We were a bit worried, then after about two days
we actually saw that what she was doing was better,
and worked better
than the way we thought it would be played.
And--
So that helped us,
because when we came to write the second episode
and the rest of them,
we began to have her voice in our ear.
And Basil?
Lord of his realm,
whose commitment to professionalism and decorum
make him a man apart.
A certain amount of his rectitude derived from
his heroic service during the Korean war.
I fought in the Korean war, you know.
I killed four men.
He was in the catering corp. He used to poison them.
Plain talking and direct,
Basil deals with every guest on a peer footing.
Would you put both your names please?
Well, would you give me a date?
- I only use one. - You don't have a first name?
No. I'm lord Meldway, so I simply sign "Meldway".
Go away. I'm so sorry
to have kept you waiting, your lordship, I do apologize.
So please do accept my forgiveness.
Now, is there something--
Anything I can do for you, anything at all?
Yes, well, I have filled this in.
Oh, please don't bother with that.
Are you taking dinner here tonight?
- Sorry? - Are you dining here tonight in this unfashionable dump?
- I wasn't planning to. - Not really your scene, is it?
Thought I'd try somewhere in town, anywhere you'd recommend?
What sort of food were you thinking of? Fruit or...
Anywhere they do French food?
Yes. France, I believe, they seem to like it there.
The swim would certainly sharpen your appetite.
You'd better hurry. The tide leaves in six minutes.
He rang me up and said, "There is a character in this,
and I'm so rude to him.
As rude as I've ever been to anybody
in any of the jobs that I've ever done,
and you know I've always played bullies and things."
He said, "But I'm not as rude to him.
I'm rude about him, about what he looks like,
I call him an ape and it's just--
And unless it's somebody I know I won't be able to do it.
It will be too embarrassing."
And he said, "Actually, you can do it,
can I send you the script?"
So he sent me the script, and of course it was hilarious.
And I rang him straight back and said, "I'd love to do it."
We got enough bananas this week, dear?
It's nice to have that kind of person staying, isn't it?
Professional class, educated, civilized.
Got both ends of the evolutionary scale this week.
Good evening.
The key to Basil is the snobbery.
So much for tonight's guests, ignorant rabble.
There's always a few, mr. Fawlty.
Not on gourmet night there won't be.
- None of these proles. - Basil!
So Harry says,
"You don't like me anymore? Why not?"
And he says, "'Cause you got so terribly pretentious."
And Harry says, "Pretentious, moi?"
This man is below Basil in class
because of his accent and the way he is,
and also because of the way he looks,
so it's a sexual jealousy, and a class jealousy. And a class fear.
If you were in a hotel where John was the boss,
you'd probably walk out.
If you had any sense you wouldn't even book it in the first place.
You'd get angry, and you'd complain.
You might even sue in the end.
And you'd go away from that hotel
thinking, "Never again."
The domestic bliss Basil and Sybil enjoy
inevitably spills over into their everyday activities
in running the hotel.
Hello, dear.
- What're you doing? - I'm kissing you, dear.
Well, don't.
Did you ever see that film "How to murder your wife"?
Yes. Awfully good, I saw it six times.
I'm sure she fell in love with him originally,
both for his poshness
and for his height
And his whole--
And his energy,
and thought it could work out between them
if they ran a business together.
The fact is most people, as far as I can make out,
are married 'cause of some strange historical accident.
It's no longer explicable logically.
They all think you're peculiar,
you know that, don't you?
They've all said at one time or another,
"How on earth did the two of us ever get together?"
"Black magic.", my mother says.
Well, she'd know, wouldn't she?
She's a fine woman mrs. Fawlty.
No, I wouldn't say that.
No, nor would I.
If the good lord meant us to worry,
he would've given us things to worry about.
He has-- my wife.
She will be back here in four hours,
and she can kill a man at ten paces
with one blow of her tongue.
I was tremendously pleased when John Howard Davis
was able to do the first series,
'cause I'd done the first "Monty Python's" with him.
What he was so good on
was casting, for example,
he suggested Pru Scales for mrs. Fawlty,
that was totally his idea.
- Basil, sometimes-- - seriously, Sybil do you remember
when we were first manacled together?
We used to laugh quite a lot?
Yes, but not at the same time, Basil.
I went through something like 10 or 12 other names
before I came to Prunella.
That shows how bad I was at it,
because in fact, there could have been nobody better
at the end of the day.
All the best comedy
from pratfalls on in
is based on pain.
And it is a deeply painful
and problematic relationship.
Prunella is an exceedingly intelligent actress.
What I gave her as a clue when we first talked about her character--
I said, "She's the sort of woman that can make love
while painting her nails."
(laughs raucously)
That trademark laugh was Prunella's creation.
(laughs raucously)
Please don't alarm yourself. It's only my wife laughing.
Scales: I don't know where that came from.
I can't remember. It may have been someone I heard in a--
Some audience or somewhere.
(raucous laugh) - It reminds me of somebody machine-gunning a seal.
Sybil, I think, is much much stronger
and more independent than Basil.
She could really function perfectly well
if Basil buzzed off or fell under a bus.
I don't think Basil could.
He's very-- he's much more dependent on Sybil.
And that's why he's much more frightened of her
than she is of him.
If a snapshot exists of the great gulf
between husband and wife,
it is the bedroom scene in "Wedding Party".
In their lonely twin beds, the childless couple
share a room, but nothing else.
As Sybil smokes her cigarette,
eats chocolates and talks to her best friend Audrey,
while a sullen and unhappy Basil
tries to concentrate on his paperback copy of "Jaws".
Oh, I know.
And to get the combination of these sad characters,
these sad people living an awful life
and make them funny, is something that lifts
the comedy out of the routine.
"Zoom". What was that?
That was your life, mate.
Oh, that was quick, do I get another?
Sorry mate, that's your lot.
- Basil. - Back to the world of dreams. Yes, dear?
No, Basil doesn't bet anymore, major.
- Do you, dear? - No, I don't, dear.
No, that particular avenue of pleasure
has been closed off.
You seem very jolly, Basil.
- Hmm? - You seem very jolly.
- Jolly? - Yes, jolly.
Sort of happy.
Oh, happy, yes, I remember that.
No.
Cooped up in this hotel all day long.
You never take me out. The only bit of life I get
is when I get away with some of my friends.
You must get away more often, dear.
Cleese: I think if Basil and Sybil went on holiday
and encountered a sort of Basil Fawlty-type situation,
I think Sybil's so smart
she makes the world work for herself.
I think with Basil it would be a question
of whether he got off on the wrong foot or not.
I think he could either decide
that this guy was somewhat worse than Hitler,
or I think he could've become great pals with him,
kind of condescendingly discussing
about how disgusting guests were.
(ringing bell)
- Could you do that in a moment? - I'm on the telephone.
You haven't finished dialling yet, have you?
Now listen,
there's a documentary on BBC two this evening
about Squawking Bird, the leader of the Blackfoot Indians in the late 1860s.
Now this starts at 8:45 and goes on for approximately
three-quarters of an hour.
- I'm sorry, are you talking to me? - Indeed I am, yes.
Is it possible for me to reserve the BBC two channel
for the duration of this telly visual feast?
Why don't you talk properly?
The cast and crew added ideas which we were happy to steal,
and these were remarkably helpful
to the overall quality of the series.
I used to do the crossword as I still do
and was sitting there doing it.
John leant across and said,
"You do anagrams, don't you?" - I went, "Yes."
He said, "Work out some anagrams of 'Fawlty Towers'."
"Why?" I asked myself.
"How do they come to be changed every week?"
I thought of this idea and I put it forward,
and it was accepted.
To have at least in one episode,
perhaps a paperboy coming along
and as a sort of morning prank rearranges the letters.
Then the whole thing fits into a pattern.
We know why it's happening.
Their shared sense of service
and their partnering to satisfy customers
and to nurture their carefully trained staff
made Sybil and Basil most gracious hosts.
Basil was the frontline stalwart at reception.
- Yes. Right. - Has it got a breeze?
- Is it airy?
Well, there's air in it.
Yes? Yes? Well? Yes?
Well, I was wondering if you could offer me
accommodation for a few nights.
- Well, have you booked? - I'm sorry?
- Have you booked? - No.
- Oh, dear. - Why, are you full?
No, we're not full. Full!
Of course we're not full.
Rosewood? Mahogany? Teak? - I beg your pardon.
What would you like your breakfast tray made out of?
- I don't really mind. - Are you sure? Fine.
Go along and have a really good night's sleep then.
I'm hoping to get a couple of hours later on myself.
I'll be up in good time to serve you your breakfast in bed.
If you can remember to sleep with your mouth open
you won't even have to wake up.
I'll just drop in small pieces of lightly buttered cake
when you're breathing in the right direction. If that doesn't put you out.
The business of running a first-class hotel
is a draining, full-time endeavour that would sap the strengths
of those who don't have a reserve of confidence
and the full support of staff.
Our favourite hotelier
believes in leading by example.
Would you take these cases to room 21?
Que?
Take to room 21.
No entienda.
(speaks Spanish)
Oh, it doesn't matter, I'll do it.
Thank you, Manuel.
Ooh, I take them!
No, I take them.
When we're away, clean the windows.
- Green? - No no, look.
Clean the windows.
- Clean, clean. - Clean the windows.
Ah!
- Morning, Fawlty. - Morning, major.
The window, see, clean the windows.
Si! Comprendo, comprendo.
He was immensely strong.
He had enough muscle to kind of control things.
Get on with your meals.
(Manuel screams) - I am punishing you for...
You would trust John to do some of those things.
A lot of that stuff was pretty damn dangerous.
Andrew just went for it and let John do it.
We saw Basil as someone
who was tremendously class-conscious.
Who was always trying to become a little bit grand...
You're going to wear that jacket, are you?
Yes, I am. Thank you, dear.
You just haven't a clue, have you?
You wouldn't understand, dear. It's called style.
...And someone who was fundamentally terrified of his wife.
Basil!
I am going to make you regret this
for the rest of your life, Basil.
Fair enough, I suppose, but I think Stubbs is partly--
- Basil! - Yes, Polly.
- I don't know-- - Basil!
I'm sick to death of you. You never learn, do you?
You never ever learn!
There's no question about it. Basil and Sybil
were the heart and soul of "Fawlty Towers".
But there was so much more to the story.
If I find out the money on that horse was yours,
you know what I'll do, Basil.
You'd have to sew 'em back on first.
(cries out)
He hit me on the head.
No, you hit him on the head,
you naughty moose!
And we'll continue our retrospective on the series in just a bit.
But first, as a person who's become familiar
with how funding works for public television in America,
I'm asking you to do your part in making sure
that the wonderful British comedies will remain staples
on this public television station.
It's only through your direct financial support
the brit-coms can be seen each week.
Pick up your phone.
Call the number at the bottom of your screen
and be generous with your pledge of support.
Thank you so very much.
There was no immediate positive critical reaction.
I think "The Daily Mirror" said,
"Long John short on jokes."
after the second episode.
And one of the Edinburgh papers said it was very poor.
And then there was sort of a rumble
of fairly positive reaction towards the end.
And then the second--
When they repeated it the second time
that's when suddenly it started to take off.
But my experience has always been that if you
do something that is original, it takes a little time
for any kind of momentum to build up.
Dennis Wilson had written the music for me
and I asked the Aeolian String Quartet,
a very august group of musicians
to come and play it for me.
We set up in the studio in Lime Grove,
and they came in,
we recorded it,
and I immediately realized it was too perfect.
So I went out and said to them,
"Look, this is too perfect, you've gotta play badly.
I just want a few bum notes please."
"Oh, we don't do that." "Yes, you do.
Yes-- it just doesn't matter."
They said, "Look, we're professional musicians,
it's very difficult to play badly."
I said, "Well, just try,
for goodness sake, it's a comedy series
not a work of art."
So they go back in there and try again,
and they can't do it.
I tried and tried and--
They wouldn't do it
because their program credit was going to be on the end titles
and they weren't going to play badly for anybody.
Basil Fawlty was such a gentlemen,
a man of refinement
who knew the importance of class.
Have you seen the people in room six?
They've never even sat on chairs before.
Sybil, that type would wear a dog turd
around his neck if it was made of gold.
It's hard for Americans to realize
how people's identity in England used to be,
and so far as I know, still to some extent
is locked into the position
that they feel they occupy
in the class system.
I mean, it is astounding when you look at it.
It's so mad it's hilarious.
But there's also something slightly nasty about it.
What do you get for living in a climate like this?
Green stamps? It's terrible.
Sorry about this.
It took five hours from London.
Couldn't find the freeway
had to take a little backstreet called the M5.
I'm sorry it wasn't wide enough for you,
a lot of the English cars have steering wheels.
They do, do they?
You wouldn't think there was room for them inside.
- See what I mean? - What?
Rubbish.
May I introduce my husband?
Well, the rubbish we get in here. Look at that.
John and Connie had managed to use the comedy
inherent in the British class system
very brilliantly in the show.
Basil Fawlty is a comic monster,
a tortured man who was quite obviously bullied at school
who now bullies Manuel
and believes himself bullied by Sybil.
None of this would've worked however
without the exceptional acting ability of the cast
and the writers John Cleese
and his then wife Indiana-born Connie Booth.
Both of us had a real intuitive feel
for this Basil character.
And we used to laugh and laugh and laugh.
We were like gods
as we imposed these humiliations on him.
First of all we would howl with laughter
and then we would ache with regret
for what this poor man was being put through.
John's, sort of so much Basil, parts of him,
and of his father
whom we both knew pretty well,
that it was familiar to both of us.
The unsung hero is of course Connie Booth
who we very very seldom see being interviewed these days,
and that's her prerogative and her choice.
But her contribution to "Fawlty Towers"
is well, enormous.
There was a three-and-a-half year gap
between the final transmission of series one in 1975,
and the first transmission of series two in 1979.
The writing team of Cleese and booth
remained brilliantly intact
even though their marriage
had unhappily ended in divorce.
Connie: We were able to get out a lot of our frustrations
with each other through those characters
and it was kind of like therapy.
I said this to Connie,
"It's going to have to be better than the first series
in order to be perceived to be as good."
Because what happens with very good first series
is that very shortly people edit the memory of them
in their mind and keep all the best bits
and throw out all the bits that weren't so good.
John was absolutely hands-on as well.
Very precise about what he wanted.
That was the great advantage of having
the writer in the rehearsal room with you as another actor
able to tell you things as opposed to just a writer
sitting there and people think he's meddling.
I think it's a great joy for an actor just to get a script like that,
and it's all there, ready.
All you have to do is go and do it.
I think he's a meticulous writer
who revels in observation
and making notes about people
and studying people and looking at people,
which is something I find very difficult to do.
John has always,
and still is,
fascinated by what makes people laugh.
So if you tell him a funny story
John will very rarely laugh,
He'll go, "Oh, yeah."
And it's gone into the computer.
And I think with "Fawlty Towers" he was going about as far--
Stretching it as far as he could stretch it
to see how he could still get away with it.
And also, as I said, the map of it--
The convoluted-- the way the plot lines
go in and out of each other.
Extraordinary writing, wonderful writing.
Meeting Basil and Sybil would have been reason enough
to book in at Fawlty Towers.
The hotel itself and its surroundings were magnificent.
Sachs: Torquay in the southern county of Devon
is at the heart of the English riviera.
Larger and more buoyant than the neighbouring towns
of Brixham and Paignton.
Basil and Sybil aimed to make Fawlty Towers
THE hotel in Torquay.
Their preferred guests?
Only the better class of course.
You can write the advertisement in "The Echo",
only don't make it too toffee-nosed, Basil.
We don't want to put people off.
I just want to keep the riff-raff away, dear.
Basil in "Gourmet Night" is desperately trying
to improve the tone of the hotel.
He doesn't want any riff-raff.
I love the fact he says in the advertisement
"No riff-raff.".
He thinks he could get the cream of Torquay society
and sort of improve his professional chances.
Perhaps get invited to dinner with some of these people.
Sybil, we've got to try and attract a better class of person.
- Why? - We're losing tone.
- We're making money. - Yes, yes.
Just.
Now we can try and build up a higher class of clientele,
turn away some of that riff-raff.
From its cheerfully welcoming lobby area
that was an oasis of calm...
(loud bangs) - God, what was that?
Bloody television exploding again!
I'll deal with it.
F-f-f-fire!
- Fire? - Fire!
- Where? - There. Fire!
Fire! Fire!
Fire!
...To its stylish and upmarket dining room
where guests could expect attentive service
in compliment to its array of culinary wonders...
I think those prawns are a bit off.
- Oh, I don't think so. - Well, they do taste rather funny.
Well, no one else has complained.
Well, I really do think they're off.
But you've eaten half of them.
- Waitress. - Yes?
There's a hair in my mousse.
Well, don't talk too loud. Everybody will want one.
What?!
...To its lovely sea-view rooms
that afforded occupants sweeping vistas
of the magnificent Devon coast.
This is the view
as far as I can remember, madam.
Yes yes, this is it.
When I pay for a view
I expect something more interesting than that.
That is Torquay, madam.
It's not good enough.
May I ask what you were expecting to see
out of a Torquay hotel bedroom window?
Sydney opera house, perhaps?
The hanging gardens of Babylon?
Herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically-- - Don't be silly.
I expect to be able to see the sea.
You can see the sea.
It's over there between the land and the sky.
The exterior used for "Fawlty Towers"
was Woodburn Grange Country Club,
a building that burnt down in 1991.
It was nowhere near Torquay, but actually in Buckinghamshire
halfway between my house and the BBC.
Meanwhile the Torquay hotel
that gave inspiration to "Fawlty Towers"
was called The Gleneagles.
We stayed at the hotel that gave us the idea,
and we'd both been able to observe the two main characters,
the guy that became Basil and his wife.
One day we were all at dinner
and Terry Gilliam was eating as American do,
that is to say they cut the meat like this
and then they cut it all up
and then they put the knife there,
pick the fork up with the right hand and spear the meat.
And he was walking by and he looked down at Terry
with a look of astonishment crossed his face and he said,
"We don't eat like that in this country."
In an interview some years ago
Cleese suggested that "The Builders",
the second episodes of the first series,
were not amongst his favourites, nor was it mine.
But it did strongly underscore
the relationship between Basil and Sybil
and in that episode it's the only time
that Polly mentions the hotel's proper address.
It's 16 Elwood Avenue.
16, that's it, thank you.
In "The Builders", the second episode of the first series,
Basil refers directly to The Gleneagles hotel.
You know the men are coming to do some work here?
- Oh yes. - So you have to go to Gleneagles
for your din-dins tonight. - Yes.
Rosemary Harrison: On getting the brochure, you would think
you're going to a traditional four-star hotel
with everything that that would entail,
but, in fact, you wouldn't expect to go into a four star hotel
and there not be a receptionist,
there not be a night porter,
the bar to close at nine o'clock.
Ironically, the terrible service at Gleneagles
that was the patent for Fawlty Towers
is now a thing of the past.
The hotel was sold in February 2005
for £1 1/2 million
and is said to be the picture of a well-run hotel
enjoying a 70% rebooking rate
versus what most certainly would have been
near a zero at Fawlty Towers.
Gleneagles is important to the Fawlty Towers story
because it was there in 1968
that Cleese and his fellow Pythons
met the owner Donald Sinclair.
He was the rudest man I've ever met.
He was wonderful.
And all the other pythons wouldn't put up with it.
They moved out and went to stay in the Imperial which was a lot better.
Why Eric stayed on I don't know,
but he did tell us this great story
about his squash kit.
He had a bag and squash kit.
He'd left it in the foyer of the hotel
and when he came back in the evening he couldn't find it.
And the proprietor said,
"Oh, I put it behind the wall
in the garden."
Eric said, "What do you think--
Why did you put it there?"
And Sinclair said,
"Ah, we thought it might be a bomb."
And Eric was astounded because this was pre-'69,
pre-the resumption of the IRA bombing.
And Eric said, "Why a bomb?"
And mr. Sinclair said, "Well, we've had some staff problems recently."
So he thought somebody was coming back
to blow up his hotel.
I couldn't understand really why
John and Eric, strange enough,
decided to stay on, but anyway they did.
Of course, in retrospect,
I realize John was actually taking notes
and planning "Fawlty Towers".
He's was very much based upon this guy Sinclair,
but the difference was
if you look at Sinclair and mrs. Sinclair,
it was a fairly standard henpecked-husband situation.
But mr. Sinclair was rather small,
and mrs. Sinclair was rather large.
So what we were able to do
because I was so much bigger than Pru,
was we were able to disguise the fact
that is was simple henpecked-husband
so it looks kind of slightly more interesting than perhaps it was.
Beyond the intrinsic fineness of the hotel itself
the case for Fawlty Towers as a sophisticated residence
ideally suited for the upper crust
was made through the peculiar talents of Basil.
A single? A double? A suite? We don't have any suites,
but we have some beautiful doubles.
- No, no, just a single. - Just a single. Absolutely.
How very wise if I may say so, your honour.
- With a bath? - Naturally, naturally.
Naturellement. (laughs)
However he may have been assessed by staff and guests
Basil lived every day certain that he was among
the last bastion of British gentility
manning the gates against the hordes of riffraff wanting in.
While he saw the nation around him
spinning down in a spiral of moral decay...
What's going on here?
Well, I can't give you a double room then.
- Oh, look-- - It's against the law.
- What law? - The law of England. Nothing to do with me.
...And trapped in a hopeless economic decline...
If they don't like making cars why don't they get themselves
another bloody job designing cathedrals
Or composing violin concertos?
The British concerto in four movements, all of them slow,
with a four-hour tea break in the middle.
Basil bravely asserted
the qualities of an English gentlemen.
What's happened to the old idea of doing something
for your fellow man? Of service?
Mr. Fawlty?
I'm coming, I'm coming. Wait a moment.
Basil's veneer of gentility was woefully thin:
Harassed by a harridan wife,
constantly frustrated not being able
to advance his social station,
bereft of any sense of working for the good of others
and sexually repressed,
Basil was a witch's brew of neuroses
in a 6'5" frame.
I know these kind of drawings
are considered decent at art school--
Would you please not leave them lying around the reception?
- I'll put them away when I've got some clothes on. - I mean, really.
(phone rings)
Hello. Fawlty Titties.
People who aren't getting enough sex are fascinated by it,
even if the fascination takes the form
of being very very cross
because other people are getting some.
That is obviously Basil's problem.
I'm not quite sure when he and Sybil last did it,
but it's a very very long time ago.
Somewhere around the second Punic war, I suspect.
You know what they're all obsessed with, don't you?
- What? - You know what they say it's all about, don't you?
Hm? Sex! Everything's connected with sex.
What a load of cobblers.
How often do you manage it?
Once a year?
Well, we knew it must be difficult.
My wife didn't see how you could manage it at all.
They're talking about holidays, Basil.
I was just saying how difficult it is to get any.
Oh my god, what did I say?
It doesn't matter.
How was I to know?
With Basil endearing himself to the guests,
with Sybil lending her deft hand to customer service,
with the hotel itself, a most desirable accommodation,
the next essential is a staff who provide memorable,
even exemplary service.
As Fawlty Towers was a boutique hotel,
the staff was small in number
but great in impact on the guests.
In the role of Manuel
I was often on the forefront of guest relations.
- What? - Que?
- K? - Si.
C? KC?
KC? What are you trying to say?
No no no que-- what.
- K-- what? - Si. Que-- what.
- CK-what? - Yes.
Who is CK-What?
- Que? - Is he the manager. Mr. What?
- Ah, manager! - He is?
- Ah! Mr. Fawlty. - What?
- Fawlty! - What are you talking about, you silly little man?
Oh, it's you again, now listen.
He not here.
How many times?
Where are your ears, you great big halfwit?
He no here.
Listen!
And then Andrew--
I'd seen Andrew in a marvellous play
by John Morton called "Habeas Corpus".
And he had just made me laugh till I hurt.
And I realized how good he was
at physical comedy.
And so I got him, and he just--
This just touched something in him because he's so quiet.
He's immensely thoughtful--
Extraordinary kind man, very considerate.
And rather quiet, almost introverted.
And then up you put that moustache on him and ding!
And this energy explodes.
I thought, "Thank god. It's going to be brilliant.
He's going to work."
He just did everything absolutely right.
As I expected him to do it.
I thought, "This is going to be a joy.",
because we didn't have to tell him anything.
(gasps)
- He bite me. - You frightened him.
- Que? - You make sudden movements like that
Of course he's going to bite.
Don't you have dogs in Calcutta?
People often feel sorry for Manuel.
They think, "Oh poor thing."
They want to father him, you know, mother him.
But to me he's a kind of a role model.
I wish I had some of the qualities that he has.
For example,
I think he's generous to a fault,
I would imagine-- give you the shirt off his back.
He would make a wonderful father,
loyal husband.
He can't hold a resentment for more than three minutes.
He feels loved, even if somebody hits him
it's a gesture of attention, at least,
which is the only kind of love he used to get in his home
in "Barthelona" with his five brothers and six sisters.
So he's got all that.
He would make a beautiful husband,
a great person, generous and so on.
Okay, he's lacking in intelligence maybe,
but you know there are worse things in life.
That doesn't stop you being a nice person.
So I look up to him as a bit of a hero.
One of the points I was trying to make with Manuel
was not that Manuel was some kind of an idiot or something,
that wasn't it at all. What annoyed me
when I went into a lot of British hotels and restaurants,
particularly one particular chain of steakhouses,
is that almost nobody there spoke any English at all.
So that the chances of you getting what you ordered
were about one in six.
Change plate.
Sorry, sorry.
Ah!
I'm so sorry. He's from Barcelona.
Do forgive me.
He thinks Bath is a locale.
Guest: He thinks what?
Some zone, some province in equatorial Torquay.
Please, please try to understand before one of us dies.
Polly was the do-it-all and do-it-well member of staff,
primarily when it came to
keeping Basil from running foul of Sybil
or being accosted by incensed guests.
You told me to shut up!
No no, he told me to shut up.
You what? He said it to me!
No, I was looking at you, but I was talking to Polly.
- Wasn't I, Polly? - Oh, yes.
Did you notice then, that I was looking at you, but talking to her?
- What? - He was looking at you but talking to me, wasn't he?
- Wasn't I? - What?
- So you weren't being rude were you, mr. Fawlty? - Absolutely not.
- You see? - Me?
- Yes. - If you say shut up to somebody
that's the one you want to shut up, isn't it? - Not necessarily.
- I'm sorry, were you talking to me? - Yes.
- I beg your pardon! - There, you see how easily
these misunderstandings occur? - Oh, yes, I do.
Bird brain.
No no, that came in third.
Uh, fish wife.
- What? - No, not that.
Small-- Fly! Fly!
Flying tart.
No, no, no,
it got off to a flying start
and its name was Dragonfly.
Thank you, Polly.
I think Polly's great genius as a comic performer
is her seriousness.
She's so overwhelmingly serious
and sincere in everything she does.
She brings great gravitas to the performance
and I think that sort of tweaks up
the comedy enormously.
You be Sybil, you get into the bed.
I am too big, I got a moustache.
What's it supposed to be, a great big hairy bogie?
It's something you get when you're puffed up.
I'll ruin you.
You'll never waitress in Torquay again.
Waitress?! That's a joke.
I help out at reception, I clean the rooms,
I deal with the tradesmen, I mend the switchboard,
I change the fuses
and if you think my duties now include
impersonating members of your family,
you have got one more screw loose than I thought.
Well, it's very interesting the psychology of all this
because A: It was John's wife,
B: She's the only sane person in the series,
and C: She's played by an outsider,
played by an American.
She plays it English,
but it's like she's commenting on the action.
It's like a Greek chorus in a way.
Saying these people are all insane,
but all will be well in the end.
She's the calm centre to it.
Polly's character, is interesting
because it's a paradox.
Here she is working for a manic-depressive, an idiot,
a man with a terrible temper,
and obsequious, for the wrong reasons.
She protects him because she recognized in him, I suppose,
that he needed protecting.
He had no allies
and she was loyal
to the point of stupidity from time to time.
But she was...
She must've felt something for him, god knows what.
It's kind of illogical, but that's how people are.
I'm sure people were kind to Hitler.
- It's Curt. - Yes?
He's potted the shrimps.
- What? - He's potted the shrimps.
- Shrimps? - We're not having shrimps tonight, Polly.
He's soused... The herrings.
What are you on about?
He's pickled the onions
and he's smashed the eggs
in his cups under the table.
First they give me a room without a bath,
then there's no lavatory paper.
Would you like some of ours?
- We keep an extra supply. (bell ringing)
Would you like some of ours?
Hello.
There's no paper in my room,
why don't you check these things?
That's what you're being paid for, isn't it?
We don't put it in the rooms.
- What? - We keep it in the lounge.
In the lounge?
I'll get you some.
Do you want plain ones
or ones with our address on it?
- Address on it? - How many sheets?
Well, how many are you going to use?
(rings bell) - Manager!
What she brought
was a kind of sensibility about character
and a kind of demand that everything
should be believable in terms of characterization.
Oh, sounds good, does it come with a smile?
- Comes with sprouts or carrots. - A smile's extra, is it?
You'll get one if you eat up all your sprouts.
John asked her opinion about practically everything
even though they were writing together.
When he found there was something
that was troubling him about his performance,
he would ask Connie.
Getting Connie's character right was not too difficult
because she is the sensible one.
But she's also Basil's confidant.
When he gets in terrible trouble
he will go to Polly and say, "This has happened
and this is what I have to achieve."
And it's terribly useful as a writing device
to have someone.
Somebody once described her as "Horatio to Hamlet".
It's wonderful to have someone that the protagonist
can go to and say, "This is what I've just done
and this is what I what I'm gonna do next."
If there's any doubt about what's happening in the plot.
She, in the pilot episode, was a philosophy student
and we didn't feel
that that worked as well as art student.
so we rerecorded just a little,
maybe four or five minutes
and cut that in, to the first episode
before it was transmitted to the general public.
At every turn, staff drew their inspiration from Basil
who spared no effort to make sure his guests were pampered.
And now, as the map is sadly inadequate
I would be very grateful if you could draw me
a diagram of the optimum route.
May I ask what's wrong with the map?
It's got curry on it.
It's perfectly simple,
you go to the end of Queen's Parade,
just listen. - I just want a diagram.
- It's really very simple. - I'd rather have a diagram,
if it won't put you out. - It does put me out.
Well, I'd like it all the same!
This is typical,
Absolutely typical.
The kind of... Ass
I have to put up with from you people!
You ponce in here
expecting to be hand waited on
hand and foot!
I'm trying to run a hotel here!
Have you any idea of how much there is to do?
Do you ever think of that? Of course not.
You're too busy sticking your noses
into every corner, poking about for things
to complain about, aren't you?
Well let me tell you something.
This is exactly how nazi Germany started!
Davies: There's great element of cruelty in Fawlty Towers
As there is in practically all comedy
that's any good and has anything to say.
Comedy's very like tragedy. It's just a question
of whether you're sympathetic to the people who are suffering
or whether you're standing back a bit and laughing at them.
Henri Bergson said,
"Comedy requires
a momentary anaesthesia of the heart."
You have to be a little bit cool
towards the people that you're watching
even if there's a fundamental affection, before you can laugh at them.
Otherwise all you do is,
"Oh, poor man! Oh, terrible."
It's a classic situation,
you have a big man and a small man,
and the small man gets hurt.
Sympathy's going to go to, A: To the small man
I mean Laurel and Hardy for instance: Classic example.
- Really, Andre, he's wonderful. - This, Basil's wife.
This, Basil.
This, smack on head.
I mean, if you look at some of the great comedians--
If you look at Groucho Marx or W.C. Fields or Basil,
people like that, they're awful,
they're awful human beings,
but because they make us laugh, we have affection for them.
On the other hand, if anyone met Basil for five minutes
he would immediately think, "Oh, he's awful, isn't he?"
So it's only the humour that saves them.
Good morning.
You're very cheerful this morning, mr. Fawlty.
Yes, one of the guests has just died.
You are wicked.
You're a waste of space.
Oh!
I think there's a mystery about why we feel sorry for Basil.
Why on earth should we?
He's mean to people,
he's devious,
he's lazy,
he's nasty, and yet we feel sorry for him.
We just feel, "Oh no."
I think it's because
we can see he's messing up his own life.
While it is difficult to imagine Basil
in a demanding profession...
At one stage,
I was contemplating becoming a surgeon.
A tree surgeon.
...It is absolutely unthinkable
that Basil should have tried his hand at running a hotel.
In polite society, Basil would've
reasonably expected to be conciliatory,
even to the most difficult guest.
But because no filters were in place
between Basil's fevered mind and his acidic tongue,
he said things that were unimaginable.
My god you're ugly, aren't you.
- Basil. - Hmm?
I'll get the doctor.
You need a plastic surgeon, dear, not a doctor.
Oh, sorry, didn't see you down there.
Don't get up.
He's very clever,
rather highly strung.
Yes yes, he should be.
Is this a piece of your brain?
Recently the Fat Duck in Bray just outside of London
was named the best restaurant in the world.
But in the 1970s when "Fawlty Towers" was set
British cuisine hadn't yet established itself
as among the world's finest.
Still, for Basil, pub grub is out.
Tacky buffets are out.
Only the finest for his clientele.
That's puke, that is.
- Well, at least it's fresh puke. - Oh, dear.
Oh! Eww!
What is it? What's the matter?
Is everything all right?
Oh, I think I'm going to be sick.
It is an unusual taste, isn't it?
It's not cooked, you ignoramus!
What are you trying to do to us, Fawlty?
- Do you mean that's raw? - Would you prefer it cooked well?
- Of course, she'd prefer it! - It will be cooked then.
- It'll be even nicer. - No no!
Equally important to the quality of food served at Fawlty Towers
is the ambiance of its dining room.
Here guests may enjoy
their dining experience to the maximum.
How can it be so difficult to get a cheese salad?
- You want to run the place? - No, no--
- Well, shut up then! - I beg your pardon?
- I'll get you a cheese salad. - Don't listen to anyone,
just get him a cheese salad. - Si?
(Manuel shouts) - Excuse me?!
Biscuits?
Would you care for rat?
For business travellers and holiday-goers alike,
dining in at the hotel
is supposed to be a high point of the day.
Food and its service--
Balms to the soul.
Another grapefruit for table 12, please.
I do beg your pardon, I do apologize, I'm so sorry.
Throw it away.
Que? Throw it away.
Throw it away!
Now!
Throw it.
Sorry, uh...
Not hot enough. Ah!
Is there anything else?
I can't breathe!
It's all right, he's only choking.
And then at one point he had to silence me with a karate chop.
We did a couple of rehearsals and I had to sort of ask him
not to follow through quite so much because two more takes,
I would have been gone under the table.
Perhaps one of the most memorable scene
in all of Fawlty Towers is in "Gourmet Night"
when Basil is dashing about like mad
to secure the duck from another restaurant
that he would pass off to his guests
as being from his own chef.
Notice how when Basil pulls up
behind the lorry on Metworth Close,
the street is dry, and as he backs out it's wet.
A continuity error that owes to having no time
and no money to reshoot the scene.
When it reversed onto the curb Basil's 1100 stalls,
prompting an outbreak that is insanely manic
and perhaps the finest bit of comic timing ever.
Damn you vicious bastard!
Come on!
Oh my god!
I'm warning you, if you don't start!
I'll count to three!
One!
Two!
Three!
Right, that's it.
You've tried it on just once too often!
Right!
Well, don't say I hadn't warned you!
I've laid it on the line for you time and time again!
Right, well, this is it!
I'm going to give you a damn good trashing!
The interesting thing about the beating the car sequence
is how technical it was.
It took a very long time to find a branch that was right.
We tried beating it with a fairly rigid branch
and it wasn't funny at all.
And we tried beating it with a floppy branch
and that didn't work.
And then we finally got a branch
that had the right degree of flexibility.
And it became terribly funny.
And it showed that no matter how good an idea is
there's always an enormous amount
of getting it right technically.
Which nobody knows unless they actually do it.
But it was funny.
The choosing of the branch was rather difficult because
you don't often find branches
lying around in leafy suburban streets.
I'm not going to tell you where we got it from.
I'm proud to reflect that two of the series on which I work,
"Monty Python" and "Fawlty Towers"
were among the very first British television comedies
to have found their way across the pond
to homes on American public television stations.
Brit-coms are still a public television staple
and they seem to be appreciated more today than ever before.
So won't you help ensure that your favourite programming
remains a fixture on this public television station,
please, go to your phone
and call in your pledge of support now.
Thank you.
The time that a critic should
start to take a show really seriously
and offer carefully thought out criticisms
is about number four of the first series,
not before that.
But, of course, they don't know that.
Because although sometimes
critics are able to say whether something is good or bad
with a certain amount of expertise,
what almost none of them understands is the process.
Because they can't do it, and you have to remember that.
If they could do it, they would be doing it, not writing about it.
Welcome back.
When one thinks about an idyllic holiday
certain qualities of accommodation
and levels of service are called to mind.
Singularly, the hotel stay
should reflect the peaceful serenity
of its seaside location.
(bell ringing) - Fire fire! Everybody out!
Basil: No!
Will you shut up?! Will you shut up?
- It's fire. - It's not fire! Is only bell!
- Where are you going? - Upstairs!
There isn't a drill yet.
I'm just showing them what the bell sounds like!
The chef calls the ratatouille basil
because he puts quite a lot of basil in it.
He put basil in the ratatouille?
- Yes. (screams)
Fawlty Towers was no leisurely stroll around the park.
At its best, it was a thundering sequence
of scene on scene
building from one comic high point to another.
(tray clangs)
Two minutes alone!
Stop stop stop stop!
- Right, let's go. - Basil--
Oh my god, look what you've done, you stupid, my tart!
- Wait a minute. - What?!
- I think it'll be all right. - Yes, you're right.
Look!
Look at it! I mean, look at that!
- Can I help? - Yes, go kill yourself.
No no, talk to Andre first.
Tell them we need another one.
Because Fawlty Towers was made for BBC two
we worked on a minimal budget.
Constructing sets to accommodate John's height
necessarily meant we'd have wobbly walls than the rest,
but it only made it funnier.
Don't you dare try and come in here tonight.
(door slams)
Henson: The scene with him on the ladder
when he was climbing up the ladder,
and the ladder goes backwards out the shot was just-- that was brilliant.
Pretending that he's testing the window.
Spiers: The actual upstairs corridor was not really upstairs.
It was actually on the studio floor.
And it was constructed very cleverly.
Although it was on the studio floor
you saw him running up two stairs
going along a little corridor
and then running down two stairs.
And then you picked him up coming down into the foyer.
That most peculiar set of steps up and down with no real reason
is something I stole unashamedly
from the Scotia Hotel in Edinburgh.
We were doing twice as much stuff
in 30 minutes as all the other shows were doing.
And that's why I think it has all that pace
and that's why I think people can watch the show
several times because there's a lot more in it.
And there were hundreds of shots in these shows.
So, I mean, some shows were well over 400 shots.
Actually, the average running time per episode
was 31 minutes and 20 seconds,
where as a commercial sitcom plays out in just 23 minutes.
John's favourite episode was "The Psychiatrist"
which wound up as being
one of the longest at 35 minutes.
But it was once even longer.
Henson: You see him hide in the broom cupboard
on the passageway in the beginning.
He spends the night in the broom cupboard.
And he comes out in the morning and he can hardly walk.
There was a good five minute mime section
of him in that cupboard, which is gone.
We didn't have to make edits--
You know, punitive edits for just timing reasons
or for scheduling reasons.
Incidentally, I think that's one of the reasons
that it's a rather special series
inasmuch as it is allowed to run its natural length.
What further heightened the sense of program density
was that in both the U.K.
And on public television stations in the U.S.
the series played just as its creators had intended
without commercial interruption.
If you look at a lot of the "Fawlty Towers" episodes
you'll find that one's about dead bodies,
one's about rats which people are like that about.
There's a lot of taboo in there.
Speaking of taboo, as in mishandling a dead body,
let's turn to "The Kipper and the Corpse".
Perhaps no other episode of "Fawlty Towers"
so perfectly plays as farce.
After celebrating that mr. Leeman
was not killed by tiddly kippers...
- He's stone cold. - Yes.
Oh joy. Oh, thank you, god!
...Basil and Manuel go about hiding the body
first encountering miss Tibbs.
- Murder! Murder! - Slap her! Slap her!
Oh, spiffing, absolutely spiffing.
Davies: Now there's a corpse
and an unconscious old lady to deal with.
Just pop them into the wardrobe
in mr. and mrs. White's bedroom.
The Whites return and get quite a shock.
Mrs. White: Let them out!
Basil cruelly suggests how this has come to be.
Now, I warned you about this before.
You can hide in your own cupboard but not other people's!
- Manuel, meanwhile, provides a bit of a distraction. (rhythmic stamping)
Next it's to the office where major Gowen asks...
Shot was he?
...And Sybil asks why they left him in the chair.
Well, he wouldn't fit in the safe
and the drawers were full. Come on, Manuel.
Next, outside the front door
where the Whites are driving off...
(car crashes)
Then to the kitchen where dr. Price tells them...
You can't keep a dead body where there's food.
- Can't we? - Of course not.
Oh, right, okay! Sorry.
Into the laundry hamper the body goes
and is dragged into the lobby.
Mr. Leeman's colleagues
are mistaken as funeral parlour employees.
Oh, we've come to collect him.
Oh, you've come to collect him?
Basil is saved exposure only by Polly's clever deception...
- Oh, I see. Mr. Leeman! - Yes.
We thought you said "the linen".
Brilliant! Sorry sorry, that's it!
...Then up to the bedroom where a guest
is preparing for an evening's entertainment.
Sorry sorry, for coming in like that.
Then inexplicably back to the Whites' room
and back downstairs where Manuel has decided he's had enough.
I stay here! It's nice!
Basil makes a final attempt to keep the corpse hidden.
- Yes? - Could I get my hat?
Your hat?
But decides the best course of action
is a hasty exit.
Ladies and gentleman, there have been a lot of cock-ups this morning.
You all deserve an explanation and I'm happy to say
that my wife will give it to you.
Thank you, thank you.
I still am very very fond of it
because I love bodies in baskets.
A wonderful actor actually, who did play the body.
He had been a bit of a stunt man.
He was a good--
Very very good live dead body.
In "The Kipper and the Corpse"
Cleese demonstrated his absolute attention to detail.
Cleese: I said to a great friend of mine,
"What was the worst problem you had
when you used to work at the savoy hotel?"
He said, "Oh, the stiffs."
I said, "What?"
He said, "Oh, getting rid of the stiffs."
I said, "You mean, people died a lot?"
He said, "A lot, the old dears.
I'm afraid they know the Savoy will always treat them well
and do these things,
so they would sometimes check in with a bottle of pills,
take them in the night, in the morning,
Savoy staff would walk in, pick up the phone,
and say we've got another one."
By the way that former Savoy employee
who told Cleese about how the hotel handled guests
who died in the night, was named Andrew Leeman,
whose name Cleese borrowed for the unfortunate mr. Leeman.
It turned out as farce.
Very very English farce, not French farce--
Very English farce
about sex and class,
which are the two things British are no good at.
Our class system is ridiculous
and our sex is awful.
The thing about farce is
that everything is happening
in an exaggerated way.
Although you may start it
quite low-key and quite real
it kind of winds up
and people get more and more frantic.
This is your beautiful vase, mrs. Richards.
Fawlty, you did give me that money.
You won it on that horse!
Ah!
Farce only exists to make people laugh.
If they laugh, it's a good farce.
If they don't laugh it's a rotten farce.
I've always had a tremendous love for farce,
and I think it's because what I like to do
more than anything else is to really laugh.
You don't do it so much as you get older,
but in your teenage years there are some times
where you just laugh
and you laugh so much that it hurts.
And you wish you could stop laughing.
Wonderful feeling.
You don't get that so much as you get older.
I've done a lot of farce in British theatre
and the essence of it working well is pace,
but not necessarily speed.
Pace-- no wasted moments
and a lot of movement--
Doors slamming, trousers falling down,
whatever happens.
And that was captured very well in Fawlty Towers
because there's a lot more movement than there is
in many other sitcoms.
What a lot of people haven't spotted is that "Fawlty Towers"
is just little 30-minute farces
that start very very low-key
and finish up absolutely frantic.
While farce is joined inextricably to physical humour
John and Connie introduced an element to British comedy
that had not been there before:
Real violence, not the cartoon capers of the "Three Stooges",
or of Laurel and Hardy, but proper pain.
"Fawlty Towers" was infinitely better for its inclusion.
You are a hideous orangutan.
Well, that lie down seems to have done you some good.
Sorry about this.
And I got him,
nailed him.
Mr. Fawlty wants to say adios.
He wants to--
No, no!
Cribbins: And quite painful with the one downstairs
that was naughty, but
I just thought it was a very funny scene
and if you're going to hit someone with a custard pie
you've got to hit them properly.
You can't sort of half do it,
you've got to go you know in the face.
He can't drink it. He's out.
No he isn't, he's only drank half a bottle.
Come on, come on, Kurt.
Come on, Kurt. Come on.
What were you doing up that ladder?
I was trying to see the girl,
is that so strange?
Stop hitting me.
You've gotta go for it.
The moment the audience sees somebody holding back a bit
or not hitting them properly, or not strangling them properly,
it's dead, it's dead in the water.
So you gotta go for it.
(groans)
I said to him afterwards,
"You know you hit me, don't you?
I mean it was really hard, you shouldn't have done it.
Come on John, please."
He said, "What's the matter with you, Andrew?
we're not doing eight shows a week in the west Indies,
it's once in your life, now pull yourself together."
We'd been practicing all week with me hitting him
With a sauce pan.
And I don't know why we didn't get a rubber sauce pan.
I was trying to hit Andrew a sort of sliding blow,
and just as I started he straightened up
and I caught him, a terrible one.
I'm afraid he had a headache for about two days.
Fawlty Towers was the fulltime residence
of miss Tibbs and miss Gatsby, along with the irrepressible,
if totally confused, major Gowen.
- Mr. Fawlty, - Hm?
- Did you know there's a psychiatrist staying? - Yes yes, I did.
- Has he come for the major? - What?
I was terrified for the old ladies
because they were quite fragile and when they would move
fast across the set or coming down the stairs
I was always convinced they were going to fall over,
but they never did.
Cleese said that his inspiration for the major
came from his rose-coloured recollection
of his prep school Latin teacher captain Lancaster.
Germans coming here?
Just for a couple of days, major.
I don't care much for Germans.
Well, I know what you mean, but--
Bunch of krauts, that's what they are,
all of them, bad eggs!
Well, yes. Forgive and forget, major.
God knows how, the bastards, still.
I better put the moose up.
Well you've got to love 'em, I suppose, haven't you?
Germans?
No no no, women.
I hate Germans, love women.
What about German women?
Good card players.
Connie and I both agreed that the major was actually
our favourite character.
That strange world he lived in.
Ballard Berkeley, as the major was again just
one of the--
A most charming, funny, you know polite English gentlemen
that you could ever hope to meet.
Manuel: How are you sir?
I can speak English.
Ah, hello major,
how are you today?
(stuttering) I'm fine, thank you.
And he gave this eccentric performance
which was just out of this world.
And Ballard Berkeley-- he's no longer with us--
I was hugely fond of him, he was I was wonderful fellow.
And having had a very distinguished career
it was lovely that right towards the end of it
he had this huge hit.
But he was like me, he was an insane cricket fan.
The hotel's reputation obviously extended well beyond Devon,
and booking a room meant visitors would often be
among a truly diverse selection
of travellers from around the globe.
The charming French lady madam Peignoir
was one of Basil's most memorable guests.
I shall sleep au natural tonight.
Good idea.
Only it's not so much fun on your own?
Oh, well. One can always pretend.
Ooh, twinge from the old leg. Better go lie down,
good night. - Good night.
Damn shrapnel.
I think you forgotten something.
- Did I? - Damn, well there you go.
Your recorder.
Oh, thank you.
You left it in my room.
Oh, thank you so much.
You left it in my room so you could come and get it,
didn't you?
I'm not having you knocking on my door
in the middle of the night.
(laughing nervously)
You naughty man.
- Good night. - Good night.
He could never handle anything actually sexual,
but he quite likes going into a sort of 1920s
Slightly sort of very slightly sophisticated
and trying to play with it all,
but be terrified if the thing actually turned to reality.
From a little further away in Europe
came a contingent of guests
whose recollections of their stay at Fawlty Towers
must have been the stuff of nightmares.
Those would be the Germans.
Could you repeat? Amplify?
Yes, yes.
- Yeah. - Yes, well, we'll come back to that.
- Wollen? - Vollen. Voluntary?
- Ein Auto mieten. - Auto? Auto-- Oh, I see.
You're volunteering to go out to get some meat.
Not necessary.
We have meat here.
(German accent) We have meat here in the building!
(animal grunt)
Well, I'll just get your hors d'oeuvres.
Hors d'oeuvres which must be obeyed
(German accent) at all times without question.
I wasn't trying to make fun of the Germans at all
because they were actually behaving very reasonably
and I think only one of them gets a bit angry at the end
and that's after Basil's made his wife cry.
So that's two egg mayonnaise, a prawn Goebbels,
a Herman Goering
and four Colditz salads.
Will you stop talking about the war?
- Me? You started it! - We did not start it.
Yes, you did. You invaded Poland.
(speaking mock German)
I'll do the funny walk.
- What? - Man: Stop it!
I'm trying to cheer her up, you stupid kraut!
His foot appeared to be going above his eyes.
If you could freeze-frame on that
and put a measure on it,
I think you'd find that his foot was well over
the average man's head height.
From across the Atlantic came an American visitor
who made demands that any American hotelier
would've found reasonable,
but which Basil found unfathomable.
- It is after 9:00. - So?
- We do actually stop serving at 9:00. - 9:00?
- If you could go in-- - It took five hours to get here.
We'd like to freshen up, maybe have a drink first, you know?
Yes, you couldn't do that afterwards?
Do what?
You mean have our drink before dinner,
after dinner freshen up and go to bed?
If you could if would make things easier for us.
Shall we go to bed now? Would that make it easier for you?
Could you make me a Waldorf salad?
A what?
Waldorf salad.
Well, I think we're just out of Waldorf.
Just make me another Waldorf--
Make me another Waldorf salad!
What are you making another Waldorf salad for?
(babbles)
Well, what do you think we serve? With a--
What the hell is that?
A vodka and orange juice.
Orange juice.
I'm afraid it's not fresh.
- Isn't it? - No.
We've just opened the bottle.
Fresh means it comes out of an orange, not a bottle.
Ah, you'd like freshly squeezed orange juice.
- As opposed to freshly unscrewed orange juice, yes. - Leave it to me.
The English don't know how to complain.
There's a nice bit, see?
Oh, Doris, it's awful.
Oh, no dear, it's not as bad as that.
I've had worse.
I don't know how they get away with it.
- Everything all right? - Oh, yes, thank you.
Thank you.
And from down under came a lovely Australian
whom Basil noticed immediately
and began to encounter in increasingly
compromising situations.
Very nice.
Oh, well, thank you.
Your thing.
I mean your charm, your charm in the middle.
Yes, I know.
He did actually apologize,
and he said to me, "You know in the scene
I have actually got to touch your bust."
I said, "Yes, that's all right, don't worry about it."
He said, "There's no boyfriend going to come
and punch me on the nose?"
I said, "No, it's fine with me."
Is there a restaurant near here?
Fawlty: There's an awfully good little Welsh place,
Leek House, about five minutes' walk.
- You'd have to go straight away. - That'll do fine.
Just turn left out of the gate and straight on,
and it's on your right.
The sight of a very pretty girl who's being very sweet
and she's very attractive,
just slightly pushes him over the edge,
but that's how close to the edge he is most of the time.
Pathetic, Basil.
No, Sybil I was reaching around for the switch.
Don't bother.
Look, the lights weren't working in the bathroom,
so I went in, checked the fitting, which was loose.
I read about it, Basil.
The male menopause, it's called.
And one word of advice.
If you're going to grope a girl, have the gallantry
to stay in the room with her while you're doing it.
His wife thought that I was the woman
he was seeing through the window and chasing after.
- She's gone completely mad. - Crazy.
She go crazy.
I said to her,
"You try to see in girl's room.",
and she go crazy.
What?
I tell her you go to see girl in room.
You crazy about this girl, okay.
Okay, so you go up to try to look at her,
and mrs. Fawlty, she go crazy.
(Manuel screams)
It's when he's in the girl's room
and Pru Scales arrives in the room
and he's got to hide.
Sorry to bother you.
I thought I better apologize for my husband's behaviour.
No please, really, mrs. Fawlty.
He's going through rather a disturbed time.
No please, I don't quite understand.
He does seem a bit worked up about something,
but I'm sure there's some quite innocent explanation.
He hides in the wardrobe.
And we had the wardrobe in the rehearsal room,
and he says, "How can I close it?
There's nothing to close it from the inside."
I said, "Put your finger out like that and pull it in."
It looks faintly rude as well.
Then, of course, she can bang the door and hurt it.
Hi, dear, just checking the doors.
Okay, all clear.
Wait.
Ah! What are you doing?
What's going on?!
I'm sorry, I thought you were somebody else!
- You scared the hell out of me! - I'm awfully sorry.
There's a girl in there and the bloke's--
Just explain to miss Miles about our little problem.
I don't recall seeing many guests at Fawlty Towers
going about with camera in hand.
Perhaps this is because their experiences at the hotel
were more likely indelibly engrained in their minds
rather than transferred to film.
While each guest's stay was memorable,
some were much more memorable than others.
And none more so
than when Basil attempted to run a fire drill
that went way awry.
We have the fire drill when I ring the fire bell.
That wasn't the fire bell, right?
How are we supposed to know that wasn't the fire bell?
Because it doesn't sound like a fire bell!
- All: It did. - It didn't!
- It did! - No, it didn't!
A fire bell is different, it's a semi-tone higher!
- A semi-tone? - At least!
Anyway the fire drill doesn't start till 12:00.
- It is 12:00. - It is now,
but that's because we've been standing about arguing about it.
How on earth can expect us to tell which bell is which?
We haven't heard them yet, have we?
You want to hear them? Right, suits me.
- Here's the burglar alarm. (alarm bell ringing)
- Oh, we can catch them first? - There aren't any.
Then why does the alarm keep going?
All right, got that? Right?
What's happening now?
Now, here's the fire bell, right?
It's a completely different sound, listen.
(high-pitched bell ringing)
Where are you going?
Well, it is a drill.
No, no, no!
You can hear the bell
so you know the moment when I ring the bell.
What are you doing? Will you come back?
- We're going outside. - No, just listen to it, you old fool!
Listen to it!
Fire fire, everybody out, please.
- Fawlty: No! - Out out.
Will you shut up? Look, will you shut up?
- It's fire! - It's not fire. It's only bell.
In the episode where there's the fire drill,
which is the same episode as the Germans--
Most people think they're separate--
There was a jacket that someone fixed
in the special effects department to smoke.
Oh no no. No no no no, please.
No no no no. Ah!
Beautifully handled.
We had firemen with hoses,
and I was covered in this
anti-fire coagulant jelly stuff,
and asbestos gloves and all that kind of stuff.
It was all very controlled.
The following scene was me coming out of the kitchen
with smoke coming out of the kitchen,
and smoke from my jacket,
saying, "Help help, there's a fire!"
and he doesn't believe, me shoves me back.
Well, that smoke, particularly on the clothes,
on the jacket, was created with the reaction
between two chemicals.
Dress rehearsal afternoon,
and I felt as I was doing the scene,
I was getting very warm under me jacket.
I thought, "No no no, this is too much."
I took the jacket off, took my shirt off,
and my skin was almost the colour of that.
Here on the shoulders, here.
And it was dark and it was plum coloured.
I wasn't panicked. It wasn't even that painful.
It was hot.
It was acid burns.
The reality was
that most people would've said, "I quit.",
but he didn't.
And actually BBC paid him some damages.
It was a very, it was a bad mistake,
very bad mistake.
I think John must have been
one of the fittest actors
around that time
because he never seemed to stop
leaping from one place to the next.
And he used to do that funny back hop.
Basil.
Mr. Fawlty?
Then we started to do the run-throughs
and I was still laughing 'cause the character of Basil Fawlty
is so hysterically funny.
(yelps)
Have you got a screw loose?
I said, "John, what am I going to do
when we get in the studio tomorrow?"
He said, "Take one look at me, you'll see the fear in my eyes,
and that will stop you laughing."
And that was absolutely true, because he was terrified. One always forgets that,
because he's such a genius, but also such a perfectionist.
More than 30 years on,
Fawlty Towers stands the test of time.
And there are few television comedies
that come close to being its equal.
I think it might be well up there, yeah.
Certainly in the top three.
And I can't name the other two,
So what does that say?
I think it's good writing for all time
in the same way that Feydeau is good writing for all time
and Shakespeare is good writing for all time.
And it'll never never date.
A: Because it's farce.
And there's nothing-- even the fashions don't date
because that area of Torquay and the way people dress,
they still dress like that.
It's to do with luck, I think.
Good fortune.
Good fortune that the team we had
worked well together...
and...
were able to deliver the goods.
I think it will still be showing in 100 year's time.
Some of my recollections of "Fawlty Towers"
in this program may have been passed through
the soft filtering lens of nostalgia,
but of two things there can be no question:
Without John Cleese the writer
it wouldn't have come to be.
Without John Cleese the performer
it couldn't possibly have achieved its comedic greatness.
I remember how surprised I was
when stand-up comedians
said how important it was to be liked.
I thought,
"I want to be funny, I don't want to be liked."
Thank you, god! Thank you so bloody much!
Manuel, let me explain.
Ah!
Brilliant!
Is that what made Britain great?
(mocking) I'm so sorry! I made a mistake.
You're a naughty boy, Fawlty!
Don't do it--
Mr. and mrs...
- Now-- (phone rings)
(screams)
What can I do for you three gentlemen?
Oh!
Hooray, the cat lives! The cat lives!
Long live the cat!
All right, mrs. Richards.
Would you like to use the office phone?
- What? - In here.
Thank you. Basil!
(quacks)
(door closes)
(retching)
Perhaps it's a dream.
No, it's not a dream. We're stuck with it.
I do apologize. You bastard!
Another mark of genius, at least in as far as
producing and writing television series is concerned,
is to know when enough is enough,
when it's best to leave off
at the very top of one's game.
Some people have asked me
when Basil is dragged out unconscious
at the end of the last of the second series,
whether that's all-- "That's all for now folks."
No, because Connie and I are simply too busy making the show
to start thinking about the future.
It was afterward that we looked at each other,
and said, "We've done that, haven't we?"
and we both thought, "Yeah, we have."
There was no desire to do it again, ever, for any reason.
Well, goodbye, dear.
It's been an interesting 15 years,
but all good things must come to an end.
I hope you enjoy your new work here,
helping to run a hotel.
Goodbye major, goodbye ladies.
Give my regards to Polly and Manuel.
Bye dear.
You've forgotten your keys, Basil.
Sorry.
Goodbye to the rest of you, I hope you enjoy your stay here.
Don't forget any complaints. Don't hesitate to tell my wife
any hour of the day or night, just shout.
Bye!
It's personally and professionally very satisfying
to know that American audiences have loved "Fawlty Towers"
whether watching on television or viewing on video tape or DVDs
for three decades now.
My hope is that in centuries to come
fans of the series, old and new,
will continue to watch perhaps streaming as video
onto their home computer or onto their cell phones
or by way of media we cannot now imagine.
Meanwhile, the medium by which "Fawlty Towers"
was first delivered, broadcast television,
and more particularly, public television,
needs your support.
This PBS station has been
a long-time home to "Fawlty Towers",
and it is through the direct financial support
of viewers like you
that their acquisition and broadcast of the series
has been made possible. Thank you for joining us,
and please call in your pledge of support
to this public television station.
Our thanks go to all those who joined us tonight.
Iain Mclean.
Luan Peters.
Bernie Cribbins.
Nicky Henson.
Terry Jones.
Bob Spiers.
John Howard Davies.
Prunella Scales.
And John Cleese.
I'm Andrew Sachs.
From all of us who were part of "Fawlty Towers Revisited",
thank you.
He loves cricket.
He used to play cricket a lot and practice cricket a lot
in the rehearsal rooms.
People sometimes ask about cricket.
You see Americans make this fundamental mistake
of thinking that cricket is a game.
It isn't. It's a spiritual practice.
In fact, somebody once said
the British people are not very spiritually inclined
so they invented cricket to give them
some idea of eternity.
I think she retains
a...
a need for love and romance and care,
which he... (chuckles)
pretty permanently fails to satisfy.
The interesting thing about the beating the car sequence
is how technical it is.
It took a very long time to find a branch that was right.
Choosing of the branch was rather difficult
because you don't often find branches lying around
in leafy suburban streets.
I'm not going to tell you where we got it from.
I think the audience just loves him.
I think they just love him,
and they love watching
somebody going over a cliff very slowly.
And that's more or less
what "Fawlty Towers" episodes were about.
You know, watching a car going towards
the end of a cliff very very slowly,
which you know finally is gonna go over,
And yes, it does.
Movement, pace,
lots of business, lots of change,
and keep the audience balancing
like a juggler's balls.
And I've welcomed that, I saw that in "Fawlty Towers".
We're talking about 30 years ago,
and it was five days out of my life, 30 years ago.
It will live with me forever.
When I die it will say...
"Man who hid girl in his room in 'Fawlty Towers' dies."
It's what I've been most remembered for.
Forget all the Shakespeare
and the national theatre and the classics.
No, that's the moment.
My special talent with "Fawlty Towers"
is pure genius.
I mean, I'm the best. That's it.
That's a joke.
If you are a member of this PBS station,
I want to add my sincere thanks to you for so being.
You make a big difference to this program
and to the shows we present,
especially the British comedy.
So keep up the good work,
and keep supporting this PBS station!
Thank you!
Do I get the money now?
Where's the money?
I'm not doing this again.
Shakespeare only got four hours out of Hamlet.
We got six hours out of Basil.
We are PBS.