49 Fun Facts About Fawlty Towers

Which city does everyone cite to excuse waiter Manuel, a line Manuel himself once falls back on?

Barcelona gets blamed so often that one guest takes the excuse to be about the manager, and Manuel has to put her right: Mr Fawlty is from Swanage.

Which order does concussed Basil keep giving his staff as German guests arrive, then break himself?

Don't mention the war is the rule Basil breaks at once, reading back an order for 'a prawn Goebbels, a Hermann Goering and four Colditz salads', and a guest ends the episode asking how ever they won.

Which car does Basil thrash with a branch when it stalls on his dinner dash?

The Austin 1100 gets a last warning first: Basil tells it he has laid it on the line time and time again, then fetches a branch to give it 'a damn good thrashing'.

What does Manuel insist his pet, named after his boss, really is?

A Siberian hamster is what the pet shop told Manuel he was buying, at a special price of five pounds, and Basil's reply is to ask whether he has heard of the bubonic plague.

Which Sybil actress was guest of honour when the Gleneagles Hotel reopened after a 2006 makeover?

Prunella Scales was guest of honour at the £1 million relaunch, where she recalled that her first question to Cleese about the Fawltys had been why they ever got married.

The Torquay hotel behind Fawlty Towers became retirement flats named after which late cast member?

Andrew Sachs, who played Manuel, died in 2016, the year the closed hotel was demolished, and the flats built on the site were named Sachs Lodge in his memory.

Co-writer Connie Booth, Polly on screen, left acting in 1995 for which profession until she retired?

Psychotherapist was Booth's second career after five years' study at the University of London; she refused to discuss the series for 30 years until a 2009 documentary, and was at first unwilling to do series two at all.

The actresses who played residents Miss Tibbs and Miss Gatsby appeared together again in a 1983 episode of which sitcom?

Only Fools and Horses cast Gilly Flower and Renee Roberts together again in Homesick, the 1983 episode in which Rodney becomes chairman of the housing committee as the Trotters angle for a council bungalow.

Where did Fawlty Towers rank in the BFI's 2000 industry poll of Britain's 100 greatest programmes?

No. 1 went to a series of only twelve episodes, which the industry's voters placed ahead of Cathy Come Home in second and Doctor Who in third.

What is Basil struggling to hang while Sybil is in hospital with an ingrowing toenail?

A moose head is the chore, and it later falls on Basil and lands on Manuel; the Major, having heard Manuel practise English from behind the desk, is convinced the thing can talk.

Which sitcom's creators cited Fawlty Towers' short run when they refused to make a third series?

The Office stopped after two series of six episodes, matching Fawlty Towers' twelve, and its creators' next sitcom, Extras, ended after two series as well.

Which cocktail, new to Basil, does demanding American Mr Hamilton order before his late dinner?

A screwdriver is beyond Basil, as is the Waldorf salad the Hamiltons order next; with the chef gone, Sybil quietly makes the proper dish while Basil fakes rows with an empty kitchen.

In 2016 commercials for which optician chain did John Cleese return to the role of Basil?

Specsavers got Basil back on screen seven years after Cleese had told the BBC that the cast were too old ever to make another episode.

Which BBC-owned streamer briefly dropped The Germans in June 2020 over the Major's slurs?

UKTV restored the episode within days, with a warning about offensive content, after Cleese protested that the Major was an old fossil the show was mocking, not endorsing.

For Spain's dub, Manuel was renamed Paolo and made a native of which country?

Italy became his home as Paolo from Naples, and the Spanish dub turned his longed-for paella into lasagna; the Catalan and French versions made him Mexican instead.

Which American sitcom grew from its creators' first idea of remaking Fawlty Towers in a hotel or inn?

Cheers kept the idea of workmates who behave like a family but moved it to a bar, and Cleese later won an Emmy for a guest appearance there.

Graham Linehan cited Fawlty Towers' farce elements as an influence on which of his sitcoms?

Father Ted was meant, Linehan said, to be an Irish sitcom with the insanity of The Young Ones, the cleverness of Blackadder and the farce of Fawlty Towers.

Basil spends The Wedding Party dodging the advances of Mrs Peignoir, a French dealer in what?

Antiques are the trade of the flirtatious Mrs Peignoir, who assures Basil that beneath his English exterior throbs a passion to make Byron look like a tobacconist.

Basil privately compares Sybil's braying laugh to the sound of someone machine-gunning which animal?

A seal being machine-gunned is what it reminds him of, he tells the Major, who assumes he must be talking about the heat until Basil adds: 'No, no. My wife's laugh.'

Which wartime special constable who witnessed the Blitz went on to play senile resident Major Gowen?

Ballard Berkeley witnessed the bombing of the Café de Paris nightclub during that service, and he was already past 70 when he was cast as the Major.

The BBC reader who assessed the first script could not see it as anything other than what?

A disaster, full of clichéd situations and stereotypical characters, was the reader's forecast to Jimmy Gilbert; both series went on to win the BAFTA for best scripted comedy.

Mr Hutchinson, the fussy guest Basil wrongly takes for a hotel inspector, actually sells what?

Cutlery is Bernard Cribbins's line of work as Hutchinson, who ends up with a pie in the face and cream in his briefcase moments before three real inspectors walk in.

Cleese's stage play of Fawlty Towers reached London's West End in 2024, eight years after premiering in which country?

Australia got the world premiere because, Cleese said, the British press did not like him very much; the London version at the Apollo wove three episodes into one plot.

Which film director was named an executive producer of the Fawlty Towers sequel that Cleese announced in 2023?

Rob Reiner's Castle Rock took on the project, which Cleese was to write and star in with his daughter Camilla: Basil discovers a daughter and the two run a boutique hotel.

Which bogus aristocrat has Basil fawning in episode one until Polly exposes him as a con man?

Lord Melbury is just another guest to be snapped at until he explains why he signs with one name, at which Basil hangs up on his builder and starts grovelling to 'your lordship'.

Which composer is Basil playing in episode one when Sybil dismisses the music as a racket?

Brahms gets a furious defence, 'Brahms' Third Racket!', before Basil mutters that far from listening all morning he has only had two bars.

Which deaf, domineering guest complains that the sea view from her room is not good enough?

Mrs Richards complains about her view, and Basil asks what she expected to see from a Torquay hotel window: 'Sydney Opera House, perhaps? Herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically?'

Which Spanish reply is Manuel's stock response to almost any instruction?

¿Qué? once convinced a hard-of-hearing guest that the manager was 'a Mr Watt', and Manuel's other stock answers are 'Sí' and the politer '¿Cómo?'.

Which cheap, incompetent builder does Basil hire behind Sybil's back, with lobby-wrecking results?

O'Reilly, played by David Kelly, gets the job purely because he is cheap, and his crew's misreading of the plans leaves Basil scrambling to fix the lobby before Sybil returns.

In which episode does Basil try to hide racehorse winnings from Sybil, who disapproves of gambling?

Communication Problems opened the second series in February 1979, and it is the Major's loose tongue that finally gives the bet away.

Which finale, held back by a BBC strike to October 1979, opens with a health inspector's list?

Basil the Rat aired seven months after the rest of series two; Mr Carnegie's list of kitchen infractions gives the staff one visit to clean up or face closure.

Which guest dies in his bed overnight, a fact Basil misses when he brings up the breakfast tray?

Mr Leeman had ordered breakfast in bed, and Basil's defence to a doctor staying at the hotel is that people 'don't talk that much in the morning'.

Which episode has Polly posing as a bedridden Sybil for the Fawltys' friends?

The Anniversary goes wrong because Basil only pretends to have forgotten the date; a scene cut before filming, found in 2022, had him climbing out of the bedroom window to escape a tipsy Sybil.

Which episode opens by unmasking the paperboy who rearranges the Fawlty Towers sign?

The Psychiatrist also has Basil turning on Sybil to her face: he tells her he is fed up with her and calls her a 'rancorous, coiffured old sow'.

Which second-series sign is the only one that is a true anagram of Fawlty Towers?

Flowery Twats uses every letter of the hotel's name exactly once; the signs were devised by a crew member with a taste for crosswords, and his other efforts all leave at least one letter out.

Although set in Devon, the hotel exteriors were shot at Wooburn Grange Country Club in which county?

Buckinghamshire got the job because the club sat halfway between Television Centre and the director's home, and he liked its smell of rancid beer; nothing was filmed in Devon.

What became of Wooburn Grange, the listed building used for the hotel exteriors, in March 1991?

Destroyed by fire after a spell as a nightclub called Basil's, the building's remains were demolished for a housing estate, leaving few traces of the site.

The Aeolian Quartet ignored director John Howard Davies's request to do what with the theme tune?

Play it badly was the request, and the quartet recorded Dennis Wilson's theme properly anyway; Davies had more luck with another idea, the dessert spoon Basil raps on Manuel's forehead.

Harvey Korman and which future Golden Girl led Chateau Snavely, the 1978 US pilot that went nowhere?

Betty White's pilot moved the action from a coastal hotel to a highway motel and went no further; Cleese said its leads played it too slow and were embarrassed by the edgy dialogue.

Which 1983 ABC remake, starring Bea Arthur, switched the sexes of its Basil and Sybil equivalents?

Amanda's by the Sea was Bea Arthur's first series since Maude; ABC dropped it after ten of the thirteen completed episodes had aired.

Which surname, given to a hotelier called Royal, was the title of John Larroquette's 1999 CBS remake?

Payne made its hotelier Royal Payne, a pun that Variety's reviewer met with a gulp, and CBS cancelled the series after eight of its nine episodes had aired.

Which friend is on the other end of the phone whenever Sybil sighs 'Oh, I know'?

Audrey is only a name on the telephone until the second-to-last episode, when she finally walks into the hotel, played by Christine Shaw.

Major Gowen's gleeful shout about which cricket county became the club's victory tweet in the 2020s?

Hampshire took to posting the Major's cry of 'Hampshire won!' after each victory, which made the actor who played him a club icon more than 30 years after his death.

What is hotelier Donald Sinclair said to have feared was inside Eric Idle's case when he threw it out?

A bomb, just in case, was Sinclair's stated reason, and asked why anyone would target his hotel he blamed trouble with his staff; Cleese called him the rudest man he had ever met.

The Pythons found Basil's real-life model in Torquay while filming in which nearby resort?

Paignton was the shoot, and while the other Pythons soon moved to a different hotel, Cleese stayed on with Connie Booth to keep watching the owner at work.

The Hotel Inspectors is said to borrow from The Government Inspector, a play by which Russian?

Nikolai Gogol's townsfolk fawn over a nobody they take for a government inspector, just as Basil does with a travelling salesman; Chekhov supplied the story Cleese filmed as Romance with a Double Bass.

Bruce Boa, the brash American Mr Hamilton of Waldorf Salad, was born in which country?

Canada produced the show's loudest American: Bruce Boa played a season of professional football for Calgary before making a career in Britain as the token American.

Cleese named a guest caught with a blow-up doll after which hostile Spectator television critic?

Richard Ingrams had called the show 'rather nasty' and said he had not laughed once, so the second series gave a Mr Ingrams a hotel room and an inflatable companion.

Who played Dr Price, who wants his sausages while Basil hides a dead guest?

Geoffrey Palmer's doctor asks how Basil could deliver breakfast to a man without noticing he was dead, and is told this is a hotel, 'not the Burma railway'.