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50 free Fawlty Towers trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Twelve episodes, two series, and fifty years of people still quoting it: Fawlty Towers packed more farce into six hours of television than most sitcoms manage in a decade. John Cleese and Connie Booth spent six weeks on every script, and it shows in how much there is to remember. These 50 questions cover the guests from hell and the running gags, the Torquay hotel and the rude owner who started it all, the cast's lives before and after the show, the American remakes that sank without trace, and the stage version that finally reached the West End. It suits anyone who has seen the episodes more than once, from casual fans to the kind of person who knows what the sign says in each one. Take it on your phone or print it for a pub quiz.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which city does everyone cite to excuse waiter Manuel, a line Manuel himself once falls back on?
Barcelona
Barcelona is the all-purpose excuse for Manuel's blunders, and Manuel himself once resorted to it. The Swedish pop group I'm from Barcelona took its name from the line.
Q 02Which order does concussed Basil keep giving his staff as German guests arrive, then break himself?
Don't mention the war
Don't mention the war is the rule Basil breaks within seconds, his concussion dredging up Hitler, Göring and the RAF's wartime raids while he takes lunch orders; one guest finally asks how the British ever won.
Q 03Which discontinued car does Basil thrash with a branch when it stalls on his dinner dash?
Austin 1100
The Austin 1100 Countryman takes its beating on Basil's frantic dash to fetch the main course, and the model had already ceased production when the episode aired in October 1975.
Q 04What does Manuel insist his pet, named after his boss and hidden from a health inspector, really is?
A Siberian hamster
A Siberian hamster is what Manuel calls the creature he has named Basil after his boss; he threatens to quit if the Fawltys get rid of it, and Basil instantly bids him goodbye.
Q 05Which Sybil actress was guest of honour when the Gleneagles Hotel reopened after a 2006 makeover?
Prunella Scales
Prunella Scales returned to the hotel that inspired the series for its £1 million relaunch; Cleese has said Sybil was first offered to Bridget Turner, who turned the part down.
Q 06The Torquay hotel behind Fawlty Towers became retirement flats named after which cast member?
Andrew Sachs
Andrew Sachs, Manuel himself, died in 2016, the year after the Gleneagles closed, and Sachs Lodge rose on the site; the hotel had kept room names such as Coral and Mimosa from the Sinclair era.
Q 07Co-writer Connie Booth, Polly on screen, left acting in 1995 for which profession until she retired?
Psychotherapist
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.
Q 08Residents Miss Tibbs and Miss Gatsby reappeared, same actresses, in a 1983 episode of which sitcom?
Only Fools and Horses
Only Fools and Horses borrowed the spinster pair for its 1983 episode Homesick, with Gilly Flower and Renee Roberts reprising Abitha Tibbs and Ursula Gatsby.
Q 09Where did Fawlty Towers rank in the BFI's 2000 industry poll of Britain's 100 greatest programmes?
No. 1
No. 1 was the verdict of 1,600 industry professionals; it also came fifth in Britain's Best Sitcom in 2004, and Empire put it 22nd among all TV shows in 2024.
Q 10What is Basil struggling to hang while Sybil is in hospital with an ingrowing toenail?
A moose head
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.
Q 11Gervais and Merchant cited Fawlty Towers' short run in refusing a third series of which sitcom?
The Office
The Office and Extras both stopped at two series on the Fawlty model; The Young Ones' writers and Victoria Wood, who capped dinnerladies at 16 episodes, gave the same reason.
Q 12Which cocktail, new to Basil, does demanding American Mr Hamilton order before his late dinner?
A screwdriver
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.
Q 13In 2016 commercials for which optician chain does Basil attack a police car he mistakes for his own?
Specsavers
Q 21The BBC reader who assessed the first script could not see it as anything other than what?
A disaster
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.
Q 22Mr Hutchinson, the fussy guest Basil wrongly takes for a hotel inspector, actually sells what?
Cutlery
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.
Q 23Cleese's stage play, fusing three episodes into one plot, opened in 2024 at which West End theatre?
Apollo
Specsavers revived Basil 37 years after the finale, replaying his series-one car beating on the wrong vehicle; that same year Cleese's own stage adaptation of the show opened in Australia.
Q 14Which BBC-owned streamer dropped The Germans for two days in June 2020 over the Major's slurs?
UKTV
UKTV reinstated the episode on 13 June with a warning after Cleese protested that the Major was a fossil being mocked, not endorsed; the BBC had already trimmed the slurs from a 2013 repeat.
Q 15For Spain's dub, Manuel was renamed Paolo and made a native of which country?
Italy
Italy supplied Paolo from Naples for the Spanish dub, his paella becoming lasagna; the original had flopped in Spain, and Catalonia's TV3 and the French version made him Mexican instead.
Q 16Which American sitcom, where Cleese guested in 1987, cited Fawlty Towers' bickering staff as inspiration?
Cheers
Cheers and 3rd Rock from the Sun both pointed to the hotel's dysfunctional workplace family as a model, and Cleese made guest appearances in each.
Q 17Graham Linehan cited Fawlty Towers' farce elements as an influence on which of his sitcoms?
Father Ted
Father Ted, co-created with Arthur Mathews, grew partly out of the hotel's farce; Linehan named Fawlty Towers among the shows he loved growing up.
Q 18Basil spends The Wedding Party dodging the advances of Mrs Peignoir, a French dealer in what?
Antiques
Antiques dealer Mrs Peignoir, played by Yvonne Gilan, is one of the upper-class guests Basil fawns over, even as a young couple's hanky-panky under his nose scandalises him.
Q 19Basil privately compares Sybil's braying laugh to the sound of someone machine-gunning which animal?
A seal
A seal being machine-gunned is Basil's verdict on the laugh; his other pet names for his wife run from the dragon and toxic midget to my little piranha fish.
Q 20Which wartime special constable who witnessed the Blitz went on to play senile resident Major Gowen?
Ballard Berkeley
Ballard Berkeley was past 70 when the series began and went on to play Guy in Fresh Fields and Hartley in To the Manor Born; the Major was his best-remembered role.
The Apollo Theatre run was extended into 2025 by demand, with Adam Jackson-Smith as Basil and Paul Nicholas as the Major; the show had first toured Australia in 2016.
Q 24Cleese's 2023 sequel plan, with daughter Camilla as Basil's long-lost child, was to be set where?
The Caribbean
The Caribbean setting came with Rob Reiner as executive producer at Castle Rock, and Cleese ruled out the BBC as broadcaster, saying it would limit his creative freedom.
Q 25Which bogus aristocrat has Basil fawning in episode one until Polly exposes him as a con man?
Lord Melbury
Lord Melbury, played by Michael Gwynn, takes Basil in completely while Sybil nags him to hang a picture; the episode was taped as a pilot on Christmas Eve 1974, nine months before broadcast.
Q 26Which composer is Basil playing in episode one when Sybil dismisses the music as a racket?
Brahms
Brahms's Third Symphony is the record, and Basil's retort renames it a racket; classical music is one of his props for the refinement he craves and never quite reaches.
Q 27Which pampered dog breed bites Polly and Manuel, who lace its food with pepper and Tabasco?
Shih Tzu
The Shih Tzu's spiked sausages make it ill and eventually kill it, one of Polly's rare flashes of malice in an episode already dealing with a dead guest.
Q 28Which deaf, domineering guest so rattles Basil that he fakes a faint simply on hearing her name?
Mrs Richards
Mrs Richards, played by Please Sir! veteran Joan Sanderson, is the guest from hell whose complaints collide with Basil's scheme to hide a betting win from Sybil.
Q 29Which Spanish reply is Manuel's stock response to almost any instruction?
¿Qué?
¿Qué? was so tied to Manuel that Clive James screened a clip of it in 1982 to show how poorly the series travelled to Spain, where the character caused offence.
Q 30Which cheap, incompetent builder does Basil hire behind Sybil's back, with lobby-wrecking results?
O'Reilly
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.