Fawlty Towers Trivia
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49 free Fawlty Towers trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Sep 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 49 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 49 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 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.
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 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.
Q 03Which car does Basil thrash with a branch when it stalls on his dinner dash?
Austin 1100
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'.
Q 04What does Manuel insist his pet, named after his boss, really is?
A Siberian hamster
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.
Q 05Which Sybil actress was guest of honour when the Gleneagles Hotel reopened after a 2006 makeover?
Prunella Scales
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.
Q 06The Torquay hotel behind Fawlty Towers became retirement flats named after which late cast member?
Andrew Sachs
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.
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 08The actresses who played residents Miss Tibbs and Miss Gatsby appeared together again in a 1983 episode of which sitcom?
Only Fools and Horses
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.
Q 09Where did Fawlty Towers rank in the BFI's 2000 industry poll of Britain's 100 greatest programmes?
No. 1
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.
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 11Which sitcom's creators cited Fawlty Towers' short run when they refused to make a third series?
The Office
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.
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 did John Cleese return to the role of Basil?
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 of Fawlty Towers reached London's West End in 2024, eight years after premiering in which country?
Australia
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.
Q 14Which BBC-owned streamer briefly dropped The Germans in June 2020 over the Major's slurs?
UKTV
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.
Q 15For Spain's dub, Manuel was renamed Paolo and made a native of which country?
Italy
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.
Q 16Which American sitcom grew from its creators' first idea of remaking Fawlty Towers in a hotel or inn?
Cheers
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.
Q 17Graham Linehan cited Fawlty Towers' farce elements as an influence on which of his sitcoms?
Father Ted
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.
Q 18Basil spends The Wedding Party dodging the advances of Mrs Peignoir, a French dealer in what?
Antiques
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.
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 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.'
Q 20Which wartime special constable who witnessed the Blitz went on to play senile resident Major Gowen?
Ballard Berkeley
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.
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.
Q 24Which film director was named an executive producer of the Fawlty Towers sequel that Cleese announced in 2023?
Rob Reiner
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.
Q 25Which bogus aristocrat has Basil fawning in episode one until Polly exposes him as a con man?
Lord Melbury
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'.
Q 26Which composer is Basil playing in episode one when Sybil dismisses the music as a racket?
Brahms
Brahms gets a furious defence, 'Brahms' Third Racket!', before Basil mutters that far from listening all morning he has only had two bars.
Q 27Which deaf, domineering guest complains that the sea view from her room is not good enough?
Mrs Richards
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?'
Q 28Which Spanish reply is Manuel's stock response to almost any instruction?
¿Qué?
¿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?'.
Q 29Which 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.
Q 30In which episode does Basil try to hide racehorse winnings from Sybil, who disapproves of gambling?
Communication Problems
Communication Problems opened the second series in February 1979, and it is the Major's loose tongue that finally gives the bet away.