Torquay,
a quintessentially English seaside resort.
It's the capital of the English Riviera,
the birthplace of Agatha Christie.
The South Devon town is perhaps best known
as the home of one of the most popular
television sitcoms ever made.
It all began here, at the Hotel Gleneagles
in Asheldon Road, in 1971.
The Monty Python team were filming nearby.
Of all the hotels in Torquay they could have stayed at,
they were booked in at this one.
The rest, as they say, is history.
The owner at the time,
was a chap called Donald Sinclair,
who was an ex-naval commander,
a peppery little man, not 6'6" like Cleese was,
but the opposite, in fact,
a small man, but very peppery and very correct.
And didn't like hotel guests.
Would've been a wonderful job if it wasn't for the guests.
The guests spoiled his job.
Various stories come out about Donald Sinclair.
Two or three come to mind.
One, Eric Idle, who was one of the Monty Python crew,
had a briefcase in reception.
And he had an alarm clock in there that was ticking.
Sinclair thought, "My God, there's a bomb in there",
and he threw it over the cliff.
Gilliam, Terry Gilliam, who was an American, in fact,
and as you know, the Americans tend to eat
in a slightly different way than the way we do,
they will cut their food, put the knife down,
take the fork into the other hand,
and then pick the food up with the fork.
This didn't suit Sinclair at all. This wasn't British.
So, as Gilliam was doing this,
he would walk past him, pick up the knife, and say,
"Sorry, we don't eat like that here."
For all but one of the Pythons,
it proved all too much,
and they packed their bags and left.
But John Cleese chose to remain at the Gleneagles.
The talented, young comedy writer was at work.
It was observing Donald Sinclair,
Cleese has said,
that first gave him the idea
for the character that became Basil Fawlty.
All good comedy
comes from what people have done and said.
You can't create, out of your head,
a very, very funny situation, or at least very rarely.
It's got to be inspired by, "My God, he said that,
he did that, I don't believe it.
I'll recall that, and I'll use it
to good effect later on."
Richard Saunders remembers
trying to order a drink from Mr. Sinclair,
while staying at the Gleneagles on a family holiday.
I walked up to the bar,
which was a fairly long bar,
about 15 feet long, down at the end of the room.
And he was behind the bar, and I walked up,
I said, "Two gin and tonics, and can I have a pint, please?"
He put his hands up, and he reached for this grill,
and slammed the grill down,
and he said, "The bar's closed."
"But I'm a resident here."
He said, "I don't care, the bar's closed."
So my colleague looked at me and he said,
"Come down to the Queens Hotel.
I'm staying down there
and we can have a pint down there."
So down we went,
and as I was walking out,
this fella said to me,
"And where do you think you're going?"
And I said, "I'm just popping down to the Queens
to have a drink with my friend.
You won't serve me."
He said, "If you go out, and you're not back by 11:00,
the door will be closed."
And when I came back,
the front door was closed, locked.
Couldn't get in.
So I thought, this is ridiculous,
my wife and daughter's in there,
so I thumped on the door.
Suddenly a window went up,
and he poked his head out the window
with his pyjamas on.
He said, "I told you, you'd be locked out,
if you weren't--"
I said, "If you don't open this door,
I shall bash it in."
Well, after about three or four minutes,
suddenly the door opened;
he said-- and he slammed it, afterwards,
he must've woke everybody up in the hotel--
and he said, "Don't ever let it happen again."
Such incidents led several guests
to seek alternative accommodation.
Ian Jones' parents, owned a rival hotel.
Our hotel, the Coppice, was situated
within a few hundred yards of the Gleneagles,
and we used to get, sort of, fugitives from the Gleneagles
used to come knocking on our door,
pleading for accommodation.
One day, my daughter wanted to get in the swimming pool.
And so I bought a little...
blow up plastic ball you could buy in those days,
and blow it up and plug it--
and I was throwing it into the pool with her,
and she was throwing it back to me,
and once as she threw it back,
this Sinclair came up,
took the ball away, and he said,
"No ball games round by the swimming pool."
I said, "It's only a little plastic--"
He said, "You can have it when you leave."
Everything was too much trouble.
People would come downstairs, and say, "Excuse me."
He'd say, "What?"
"Could you call me a taxi?"
"Oh, all right. If I have to."
When I tell these stories,
People look at me and they say, "You're kidding."
And I say, "That is absolutely true."
And I can well understand
why John Cleese went away and thought,
"Now, this will make a very nice program."
Donald Sinclair was married
to a Scotswoman, called Betty.
Betty tried to keep the peace,
to the extent when she went out shopping,
she would sometime lock him in the flat upstairs,
say to the staff, "Don't let him out,
he's only going to upset you."
Betty Sinclair was...
a very formidable woman,
and it was always that she seemed to make the bullets,
and then Donald would-- would fire them.
My parents used to go out every Thursday night during the summer.
They'd go out with Donald and Betty,
out to a country pub,
and then, when they came back,
we'd be eagerly awaiting their return,
so they could relate to us
the latest episodes that occurred at the Gleneagles
during the previous week.
And what used to happen was,
my mother would sit in the back of the car
on the way out,
and Betty would tell my mother the terrible things
that he'd said to the guests during the week.
And Donald would be sat in the front with my father,
and he'd tell my father
the terrible things that she'd driven him to say.
Another thing Donald Sinclair
had in common with Basil--
he didn't like builders.
Fred Tribe, who did regular building work
for the Sinclairs,
recalls Donald's reaction
when a colleague accidentally set fire to a tree
in the hotel grounds.
He said to them, "My tree!"
He got very annoyed, and he dropped down on his knees,
and in the end, he was beating the gravel with his hands,
saying, "You damn builders, what have you done to it?"
And with that-- he was all upset--
with that, out came his wife and said, "Donald, darling,
what are you doing down there?"
And he still went on about these blasted builders.
Donald Sinclair died in 1981.
His relatives, who still live locally,
declined to be interviewed.
But they did say
they felt he'd been rather maligned.
He may be an eccentric,
but was he really as bad as all that?
This family has happy memories of Mr. Sinclair.
Linda Baker chose the Gleneagles
as the venue for her wedding reception.
We had heard, that he did rather like to be...
firm with everyone,
so we hoped he wouldn't be on the day.
And we didn't have any reports that he had been,
no guests seemed to be upset, so it was fine.
Commander Sinclair, as he says himself,
could be a little brusque, from time to time.
And Betty was certainly a talker.
So there are elements
of truth in the couple,
but I think very much exaggerated.
Bob French agrees.
He used to advise Mrs. Sinclair
on interior design.
I think there has been
a mythology of Fawlty Towers.
People are often looking
for stories to come out of that hotel,
whereas most of the stories, in fact,
came out of the fertile minds
of the scriptwriters.
There was probably some jealousy there,
because there was no doubt about it,
she had one of the nicest hotels in Torquay.
The Gleneagles Hotel
was a very nice hotel, beautifully appointed.
And it was just that...
perhaps it lacked a little in the...
service department.
So much for Basil and Sybil.
But who inspired Manuel,
the hapless waiter from Barcelona?
Apparently,
there are several possible candidates.
There must've been many, many, Spanish waiters
that have, you know,
spilled drinks down laps in Torquay over the years.
I would've thought, very many.
And certainly quite a few
that had no grasp of the language at all.
There was a waiter, who worked here--
a foreign waiter--
whether Manuel was based on that, we don't know,
but he got so fed up
with working for Donald Sinclair,
that he called a taxi,
and said, "Take me to London, quick."
and the taxi drove him--
God knows what it cost to drive him to London.
Mark Robinson believes
Manuel was based on a Greek waiter
he used to work with, called George.
I've seen him take out tea when people asked for coffee,
and when people asked for Earl Grey tea,
give them normal tea.
When they'd ask for skim milk
and we hadn't got skim milk in the kitchen
go and put half the milk away
and pour water in,
so it looked like skim milk to people.
There was a conference at the hotel,
and he served the coffee,
and they asked for a second cup of coffee
and he went up to them and said,
"You pay me bloody money, you get bloody coffee.
You don't pay me bloody money, you don't get no bloody coffee."
And, of course,
I think that's where John Cleese got his idea,
'cause he used to come into the hotel
and have afternoon teas there.
Wherever you are in Torquay,
you're never very far
from a hotel or guest house.
So, what do the town's hoteliers make
of its close association with Fawlty Towers?
It's a slight embarrassment, I think it's true to say.
It is a reputation that, perhaps unkindly,
we've had to live with since the early 70's.
But I can assure you
that a lot of the hotels, in this bay particularly,
are run a lot more professional
than perhaps Fawlty Towers was.
They may be embarrassed, but I'm very proud of it.
Whatever happens at the end of the day,
Torquay is getting a very, very good plug
from a cult comedy,
and I'm sure everyone in the bay
is grateful for it.
There are very few people without a sense of humour here,
who would say, "We don't like
that sort of publicity here." There are a few.
We get people from all over the world. It's astonishing.
"Is this where Fawlty Towers started?"
Or the Australians,
"It doesn't look like the place to me, mate."
And the coaches detour past the front of the hotel
off the main road,
six or seven coaches every morning come past,
and you can see the driver pointing to the hotel.
It's a shrine.