"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." "Welcome, Andrew Sachs." "Now, first of all, could you tell us a bit about how you were chosen to play the part of Manuel and what your first impressions were of the part?" "I'd been working with John Cleese in the early '70s on some training films, for his company, Video Arts." "So we got to know each other." "He got to know my work, and we got on well together, worked well together, had the same sort of timing, and no problems in the technical side." "And during the making of one of those films, he brought up this-- pilot he'd written for the BBC and would I like to play the Spanish waiter?" "And my first impression was" ""Very nice," 'cause I'd never been a regular contributor to a sitcom series." "I thought, "That's nice."" "I'd done guest things in "Rising Damp,"" "and "You..." or whatever." "First regular part, I thought," ""What?" "How wonderful."" "Then I thought, "Well, I'll ask him this."" ""I love the idea, thank you, John, but... could you make him a German waiter?" "Because I'm not sure I can do a Spanish accent."" "And I come from Germany, German's my first language." "So I thought that'd be easy." "And he thought about this for a minute-- bless him-- and he must have thought, "This guy's crazy."" "And he thought, "No, I don't think so, it's good-- nice, but I don't think so."" "and... of course, it wouldn't have worked as a German." "Can you imagine?" "Telling the guests to do exactly as they're told-- not quite right." "So I buckled down to it, and mugged up the accent on the way to the studio, as it were." "And we got on with it." "And he was born." "And he was born, yes." "What were your first impressions of the part, as you start to read for it?" "Very nice to be-- what a great script." "Looks good, but the part is so small." "It was only a small part." "Nevertheless, I thought, "There is a nice character part that I could tackle very easily."" ""Good casting," I thought." "And it's the sort of part that I'd been playing for 20 years beforehand." "So I'd learned my trade a bit." "That's what I thought." "Were you worried about the violence at all?" "No." "No, I'd done a lot of physical work." "I was with Brian Rix for a long time, at the Whitehall Theatre." "And had done a lot of farce, and falling about, and jumping around, and being hit and hitting back, and falling off buildings and things." "So that was nothing." "And I didn't know that he was going to poke me in the eye, did I?" "At the time." "What were the significant differences between your conception of Manuel's character and John and Connie's?" "For example, did you have much input in the development of Manuel?" "I don't think-- no, I just accepted what the script said." "And my work, as I see it, as an actor, is to try and be true to the author's intention." "So I wasn't critical of how the part was written or anything." "It just looked good." "And I thought, "Yeah, how do I fit in this?" "How do I play my part in that recipe?"" "So that was no problem." "Who came up with the moustache?" "Oh!" "I did." "I'll tell you why." "I thought" "I'd never been a regular on TV, and I thought, "Well, if I am, I know what it's like that people recognize you in the street, and you get an image, and that's how you look."" "I'd always done disguise things, 'cause I never liked to reveal myself, at that time, and I thought the idea would be a moustache," "I'll ask the producer if I can have a moustache." "And I thought, "He'll never let me,"" "because John was wearing a moustache." ""They won't have two moustaches in the same show."" "so I asked, and he said, this is John Howard-Davies-- he said, "Yeah, all right."" "So I thought, "Okay, fine." "He said it, okay."" "And that's how it came about." "And did it work as a disguise for the general public?" "Oh, yes." "And the white jacket." "I was very rarely recognized, even at the height of its popularity." "I remember sitting in the tube one day, and there were two girls opposite me, one describing the previous night's episode to the other." "And they looked straight at me, and didn't know who the hell I was." "So that's very nice." "Did you feel intimidated in any way, playing alongside John and Connie?" "Not because they were co-stars, but because they were creators of this series?" "No, not intimidated-- awed, 'cause I admire good writing." "And this was good writing." "Did you do much research into the part of Manuel?" "Was he based on anyone you knew?" "I didn't go on a three-year training course in catering, if that's what you're asking." "The research I did on it was no more than an actor gives to many of his parts." "I suppose you could say, it's 20 years of research-- of working the trade, of having a-- an aptitude for comedy." "I seem to do more of that than the serious stuff, though not exclusively." "So I have this kind of detached look about life." "I tend to watch people, rather than be them, and see the comic potential in the absurdity of the human condition anyway." "That was good preparation for playing the part." "What was the secret between the relationship between John and Manuel, or Fawlty and Manuel?" "What was the secret chemistry that made that such a great comedy duo?" "Well, if you get a big man and a small man, and the big man hits the small man, the small man is gonna get the sympathy, so I thought, "That's good."" "The other thing is that although people often say-- often think of Manuel as somebody pathetic" ""Oh, poor thing," and "Oh, dear--"" "he's actually a very successful man." "He's a happy, successful man." "Because he's found a family in Britain." "He loves Britain." "A surrogate family, because he's used to his mother, his father, his five brothers, and six sisters in Barcelona, so he's very much a family man." "He loves and he acknowledges that no matter what violence is meted out to him, by anybody else, it means he's noticed, which in a big family in Barcelona, the only way you're noticed is to do something naughty," "and get a slap around the ear from your mother, you see?" "It means, "Ah, she cares for me."" "And in the same way, I think he's a child... with his parents-- with his family around him." "Intensely loyal, I should think;" "generous to a fault;" "would make a wonderful husband and father." "If he has any drawbacks, it's perhaps a lack of intelligence." "But there are worse things than not being intelligent in life." "So, he's a very successful man." "And it's that combination of... joy in life that he has, with being a bit downtrodden." "Apparently it's a good combination." "Yeah, he's kind of full of joy, and Basil is full of "Aarghh!"" "if I can put it like that." "And it's that conflict I sometimes" "I mean he's reminds me a bit of a labrador," "Manuel, sometimes, in the way that he'd come back, despite being maltreated." "Yeah, a pet dog." "That's not a bad analogy." "And you mentioned conflict." "That's the heart of all drama, be it comedy or tragedy, isn't it?" "And there's plenty of that in the series." "Yeah." "Did you get any feedback about your interpretation of the part from genuine waiters around the country?" "I did, quite a lot." "But I couldn't understand it, because their English was so bad, I think." "No, not really!" "No." "Now, how did the role of Manuel and the series, "Fawlty Towers,"" "affect your subsequent acting career, whether it be playing those comic roles, or playing the more serious stuff that you've done subsequently?" "Yeah, that's an interesting question." "It's often puzzled me." "I don't know, because unless I'd lived a second life without having experienced "Fawlty Towers,"" "I wouldn't have anything to compare with." "I think it opened a lot of doors." "But, I dare say, it shut some as well." "And there were, shortly afterwards-- after "Fawlty Towers," there were lots of offers of something really imaginative-- like "Would you play an Italian hotel manager?"" "I thought, "That's one step up on a Spanish hotel waiter."" "So there were efforts to... have me virtually as Manuel, but not-- "Oh, that's not Manuel." "We want you to wear a moustache and a white jacket, but it's not Manuel." "No, no, no, nothing to do--"" "Well, it is, you know?" "So I tried to fight shy of Spanish parts." "Still do, although-- yeah, still do." "'Cause other people can tackle those without... references of Manuel in the background." "But on the whole, it's done me a lot of good." "Although I've never been able to capitalize on the success of it." "Because I played the leading parts in three other sitcoms, subsequently, none of which made a second series." "Not just because I was in them-- or maybe because I was in them, I don't know-- but because the writing wasn't anywhere near as good." "And how can you top something as good as "Fawlty Towers"?" "Very difficult." "Has it impinged on your personal life, in any way?" "Impinged?" "Well, very nicely, really." "Very happy to have had that success." "And..." "I never take umbrage at people talking to me about it-- it's a bit boring when you hear the same question" ""What's it like working with John Cleese?"" ""What's he really like?"" "And you answer that question as though it's the first time you've heard it." "So, there's a bit of the actor that comes into you." "But you know, it's well meaning, so it's a small price to pay." "Yeah, I mean, it's-- as you say, it's opened many doors, and maybe shut some, but of the doors that opened, the ones that were opened for you, which one were you most happy about?" "And which one were you least happy about?" "Which one was I most happy?" "Well, things came out of it, perhaps, because I was..." "I was working at the BBC in the television ambience, and I was in the series, that producers and so on were more interested in me than had I not been in the show." "Your character was the butt of much physical violence from Basil." "Did you mind putting yourself through all that physical danger for the sake of a sitcom?" "It's not really dangerous." "If you rehearse a thing properly, and we did, and he's a master of timing, and I can react very well to it" "I'm fairly agile." "So it looks violent, but it isn't..." "On the whole." "No, it isn't, really." "Did you have any on-set accidents though?" "As a result of bad timing?" "Yes, there were some." "In the sequence where there's a fire in the kitchen-- which was beautifully handled, with all these firemen with hoses of anti-fire foam, covered in asb-- anti-fire gel and things." "But the scene immediately following that, which we recorded separately, was me coming out of the kitchen with my jacket smoking, collapsing at his feet, and saying, "Ah, please!" "Help, help, fire."" "And that was made with the reaction of two chemicals." "It went wrong." "Instead of just smoking-- which it did-- it also soaked through the jacket, during dress rehearsal in the afternoon, I remember." "It got hotter and hotter." "I had to stop." "Why?" "What-- "Because something's wrong."" "I took the jacket off, and my skin was kind of plum coloured." "However, not much pain." "I had it dressed and did the show in the evening." "That got a bit painful." "So if you ever see the show again, just have a little-- tear of sorrow for me, there." "This is where it really hurt, because at the same time I was doing" "I was playing the lead in "No Sex, Please." "We're British", at the Strand Theatre in London, every night, in 1975." "We recorded on a Sunday." "And that was a very physical show." "And for the next three weeks," "I had to have my arms and things dressed every day." "But to have, as part of the business in the show, to have these encyclopaedias thrown at me, like this, as a gag, into there, I've never known such pain." "That's not nice." "But, you know, you survive." "It's all right." "And as for the violence-- that John is supposed to have handed down to me, he never did... he told me to say." "How much fun was it, working with the cast on "Fawlty Towers"?" "It was great fun." "With hindsight, you romanticize things, but I remember really enjoying it, and having such a good time, with John as a superb head of the team, and John Howard-Davies and Bob Spiers, later." "Contributions were encouraged from everybody, everybody, even the smallest bit part." "And the people who came in just for one week, were made welcome." "I know what it's like coming as a new boy into an established series, you feel, "I'd rather go home now."" "But no." "John, particularly, would get everybody in." "You're here for just one week, two lines, doesn't matter." "You're part of the team." "That was enormously helpful for everybody." "It did wonders for the atmosphere." "My memories of it are totally great." "Good ingredients for a good recipe, and a good... dish that's offered." "Talking of guest stars, who were your favourites of the people that came in?" "Quite a number." "Joan Sanderson comes to mind-- Mrs. Richards, the deaf lady." "Qué?" "What?" "Qué?" " Qué?" " sí." "Sí?" "K.C.?" "K.C.?" "What're you trying to say?" "No, no, no." "Qué, what." ""K" what?" "Sí." "Qué, what." "C.K. Watt?" "Yes!" "Who is C.K. Watt?" "Qué?" "Is he the manager, Mr. Watt?" " Oh, manager!" " He is?" "Ah, Mr. Fawlty." " What?" " Fawlty." "What are you talking about, you silly little man?" "Wonderful actress, wonderful." "Formidable, but wonderful." "So, I knew her." "Geoffrey Palmer." "One of my fav-- my very favourite scene I think, is when... he's discovered this dead body, upstairs, and he's seen to that, and he comes down to have breakfast, and it's too late." "Leave it." " No, no, I take it." " Leave it." "No, no." "Is not time, please." "No, no, no." "Please." "I'm sitting here." "Is no lunch till" "I'm still having breakfast." "Is finish." "All gone." "Breakfast kaputt." "I'm having sausages." "Is not allowed." "Then my very favourite line of the whole series is when he, in that straight face he's got, that hangdog look, he says," "Look, I'm a doctor." "I'm a doctor and I want my sausages." "I tell you is finished." "Bye-bye, please." "Bye-bye." "Now, look!" "Is finish." "Give those to me." "Come on, come on." "No, is no possible." "Is everything all right?" "That's one of my very favourite bits." "Oh!" "I'll tell you another bit." "Mrs. Richards-- and we nearly cut this in rehearsal, I remember!" "It was my one contribution, as far as I remember it," "I'll tell you what it was," "John shouts into her deaf aid and she goes like that, and knocks her head, you see?" "And he goes to the floor and he says, is this part of your brain?" "And we were doing this at rehearsal, and suddenly that line wasn't there." "And I said to him afterwards," ""What did you cut that for?"" "and he said, "We decided it wasn't very good."" "I said, "You can't do that!" "It's brilliant." "Do it, put it back."" "So for once he actually listened to one of my suggestions." "What?" "Basil." "Don't." "Wait, wait, wait." "I haven't got it turned up enough." "Basil!" "I said!" "My head, my head." "Has it come away?" "Did you bang your head?" "Yes, yes!" "Oh, dear." "Let me have a look." "You'd better go and lie down before something else happens." "Shut up, Basil." "Why don't you call the police?" "We will, the moment we've searched the rooms." "My money's been taken." "Yes, I know." "Try not to speak." "Is this a piece of your brain?" "That's my contribution to the writing of "Fawlty Towers."" "what about Bernard Cribbins?" "Oh, Bernie." "He's amazing." "I'd worked with him before." "And I've known him for many years." "If fact, subsequently I did pantomime with him at Portsmouth." "I played Dame, I think." "I can't remember." "I admire him because... he seems to be fazed by nothing." "If the set fell down around him-- this is the impression I get-- that it wouldn't worry him." "He'd just cope and do it." "It's always nice if you have an actor with a sense of humour, playing a character who hasn't got one." "That's a great combination." "And he played that superbly." "Please, señor, Mr. Fawlty want to say "adios. "" "He wants to what?" "Noo!" "Oooh!" "The cream?" "Papers arrive yet, Fawlty?" "Not yet, Major." "No, sorry." "What about Brian Hall as Terry?" "It was lovely." "He only came in the second series, because it was felt-- John and Connie felt that this is a hotel that's only run by three people." "We must get some more staff." "And we don't have a cook, so we had him." "Brian's lovely just how he is, it struck me, happy, cockney, great sort, you know." "And he was lovely, and he had a tragic end." "He died very early." "And that was really sad, 'cause we all liked him." "And I think he liked us." "What's all this about rat poison on the veal?" "He's put rat poison on one." "They've got mixed up, and nobody knows which is which now." "What happened to the one the cat ate?" "The cat?" "That's no good." "That might have poison on it, too." "Well, where is it?" " What?" " Where's the cat's slice?" "Up there." "Right." "Now, how's the cat?" "How's the c-- how's the cat?" "We're about to take the life of a public health inspector, and you want to know how's the cat?" "It's gone to London to see the queen!" "What are we going to do?" " He's all right." " Great." "Hurray!" "Hurray!" "The cat lives!" "The cat lives, long live the cat!" "What are we going to do?" "Mr. Fawlty, if the cat is all right, that means that slice is all right." "How long would it take to work?" "That stuff?" "Two minutes." "He had this 10 minutes ago, at least." "It's a bit chewed there." "I'll give it a trim." "My favourite episode would be-- has to be the one with the rat." "Sorry!" "Hamster." "Not a rat." "Filigree Siberian hamster." "Because..." "I had the biggest part that I'd had in any of the other episodes." "It was quite a big role." "And we had an extra luxury-- it was the last show we did of the whole series, the whole two series, and there was some kind of strike or something, and we were ready to go in the studio and record it" "with an audience, and we had to cancel it, and remount it some weeks later." "So we got extra rehearsal, a few days' extra rehearsal to remind ourselves what we were doing." "And we got an extra half day of recording time in the studio." "Total luxury, 'cause normally you do the whole episode in one day." "Turn up in the morning, do all the camera rehearsals, dress rehearsals, this, that, notes and all that, by the time you get to the show and the audience is wheeled in, you're a bit gaga." "Wrong time to do a recording, so we had that luxury." "But you see, I am a bit stupid sometimes." "Because I remember John had to point something out to me that is so obvious, in that, when this hamster goes lost, gets lost, runs away," "I go into the garden shed or something, and I call him, call his name, which was Basil." "And I remember during rehearsals," "I just said, "Basil, Basil." You see?" "And John took me over to one side and he said," ""You know, very good, but... just remember that Basil is also the part I play, so that you have named your hamster after me." "So give it a bit more, let them know this."" "So simple." "Obvious." "So, in fact, we did it:" "Basil?" "Basil?" "How would you say that the show fits in with sitcom history?" "Was it one of those sitcoms that pushed the boundaries?" "Or was it more in the traditional mold of the sitcom?" "It's certainly in the traditional mold of comedy." "It goes right back to French farce, doesn't it?" "In that it's very tightly plotted, very complex stories, some of them, you really have to pay attention to know what's going to happen." "In the same way you do with a Feydeau farce." "So there's that long tradition behind it." "What made it... in a sense... broke the bounds-- what did you say?" "Pushed the boundaries." "Pushed the boundaries of comedy, is that... like very few other programs at that time, there was much more movement, action, comedy that depended less on words, and more on behaviour and so on." "Body language." "There were others like-- some others do have them, for instance, which is all kind of movement." "So it certainly had that quality." "And there were many more shots, it moved along much faster than other-- even great-- sitcoms... that tended to be based and centred on dialogue, people talking to each other, having a cup of tea and getting up from the sofa," "which is now exemplified by "The Royal Family,"" "which does nothing, Where the biggest action is somebody getting up to make a cup of tea, but brilliantly done." "So we certainly had that, which was less usual at the time." "What appears to be a very simple plot, is actually densely complicated, when you start to follow it." "That's why I always felt, about watching "Fawlty Towers,"" "was you'd start off quite relaxed but halfway through you'd be like-- like that." "Yes." "Because already so many things have-- could go wrong." "And would go wrong." "In that episode with the dead body, played in a lively way by Derek Royle, we wanted a small man, 'cause... we had to carry him up and down stairs and things, all week of rehearsals." "And I said to John, "It's all right for you, but, you know, I'm only a little guy." "Let's get somebody small." "I got the very man, Derek Royle."" "Got him." "And he was an acrobat." "So if we did drop him on the stairs, it didn't matter." "He could just get up." "Okay." "He's very, very heavy." "Did you get to keep the white jacket?" "Yes, yes." "I got to keep the white jacket." "I have it hanging in my wardrobe." "Andrew Sachs, thank you very much." "Pleasure." "I was always fascinated by comedy, and it's very strange when I look back on it." "I can actually remember being ill in... bed when I was 12, using a school exercise book to write a... a script for two radio comics whom I used to listen to at that time." "And when I was at Clifton, we used to have this little blue book with all the information in it." "Every time I heard a good joke, I used to write it, you know, on the white bits that didn't have print on it." "So it was something odd going on, and when I watched comedy" "I used to watch an enormous number of American sitcoms in the mid '50s, you know, like George Burns and Gracie Allen," "Jack Benny, Phil Silvers, Amos 'n Andy, Joan Davis-- a lot of them were American-- the majority." "I realize, in retrospect, that it was almost as though I was-- almost as though I was studying them, or trying to understand what was going on in some way." "I was obsessional about "The Goon Show."" "And when I was at Clifton, I did a couple of... entertainments." "That is to say, I did kinds of sketches." "So there was something going on." "But the whole point was, if you came from Weston-Super-Mare, you didn't go into show business;" "you became an accountant, or a lawyer, or possibly sold insurance." "I mean, there were no other possibilities." "So although I'd done some entertainments at school, and I'd done sketches in front of audiences-- and quite enjoyed it, although I was terribly scared in terms of stage fright" "I got to Cambridge, and I got into the Footlights completely by accident, but found I could make people laugh." "But I had no intention still of going into show business, because in those days, '62, '63-- people from Cambridge didn't think of doing it." "Within three years, all the people who went to Cambridge were practically planning to go into show business if they had those kind of talents." "And what happened was, I did the... the Footlights show, which was a kind of, like in America, the Hasty Pudding show at Harvard-- a review show lasting two hours." "And I did that in '62, and I thought it was terribly good-- which it wasn't-- but I thought it was terribly good." "So in '63 I very nearly didn't do the show, especially since I hadn't done much work that year, and I thought I might fail the exams." "But I did it in the end." "And to my surprise, one day, after I got offstage and went up to the Footlights club room to have a drink, there were two very nice men in dark suits who said, "How would you like to come and work" "for the BBC as a writer and a producer?"" "Because they'd noticed that I had written the material." "Interesting." "Not the performance side, but the writing side." "And I said, "Well, um, why not?" And I thought about it" "I could sell it to my parents because it was the BBC, so there was a pension plan, you know, it was like joining the civil service." "And... from a money point of view, they were offering me £30 a week, and if I'd gone into the law, which was what I was studying at Cambridge," "I'd have got £12 a week." "And I wasn't very attached to the law, so I kind of-- I was out of there." "Once I finished with Python, all I knew, oddly enough, was that I wanted to do something with Connie Booth." "We were married at the time." "And I didn't know what, but I went and talked to Jimmy Gilbert, who was the head of light entertainment, and I said, "I'd like to do something with Connie."" "and he said, "Fine, go, you know, come back with an idea."" "And I went back, and I said to Connie, they'd like us to do a pilot, what should we do?" "And we spent about 20 minutes deciding we couldn't do the sort of Mike Nichols-Elaine May stuff, 'cause that'd been done, and also very well done, by the two Johns and Eleanor Bron." "And then I said, "What about that hotel we'd stayed in?"" "Because when Connie'd been occasionally doing parts in "Fawlty Towers," she'd come down to Torquay, and she had stayed at this amazing hotel run by Mr. Sinclair, and it was called the Gleneagles Hotel." "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." "And he was so extraordinarily rude," "I mean, one day, we were all at dinner, and Terry Gilliam was eating as Americans 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 in the right hand, and spear the meat." "And he was walking by, and he looked down at Terry and this look of astonishment crossed his face, and he said," ""We don't eat like that in this country," he said." "And on another occasion Eric Idle left his briefcase by the front door, in the morning, because we'd had to wait for the cab and he forgot it." "And then, in the evening, he got back, he said," ""I left my briefcase."" "Mr. Sinclair said, "Yes, it's the far side of the wall."" "Eric looked out of the main entrance where he was pointing, and there was the swimming pool, on the far side of the swimming pool, there was a wall." "And he said, "You mean the other side of the wall?"" ""What?" he said." "Eric said, "Well, why do you think-- why did you put it there?"" "And Sinclair said..." ""We thought it might be a bomb."" "and Eric was astounded, 'cause this was pre '69, pre the resumption of the IRA bombing, and Eric said, "Well, 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." "So this extraordinary man was very, very big in my memory and Connie's." "And within a very short time, we'd figured out that that was where we wanted to set the hotel." "But the interesting thing is, nobody thought it was a good idea." "All the expert advice we got was," ""It's going to be very claustrophobic in the hotel, you know." "You must try and get outside."" "And when we wrote the first script, there's a famous memo, which the current head of light entertainment has on the wall of his office, saying that, "This is a very boring situation, the script has nothing but very cliché characters," "and I cannot see anything but a disaster if we go ahead with it."" "And that's on the wall." "And a great friend of mine, Iain Johnstone, who helped me write "Fierce Creatures,"" "heard three producers at the bar say," ""Oh dear, have you seen this new script Cleese has done?"" ""Oh, it's terrible, why'd he ever leave Monty Python?"" "So it's kind of fascinating that when you try and do something new, as William Goldman, the screenwriter, says," ""Nobody knows." "Nobody ever knows whether it's going to work or not."" "I love the first series of "Fawlty Towers."" "It was one of the most exciting times of my life, because it was as though someone had opened the gate... to a field of flowers that no one had picked before." "And you were able to gambol through the gate, and there were flowers everywhere." "We'd entered a new territory." "It was though almost everything we thought of, for about a year, seemed or felt original." "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." "Then, there was a sort of... a rumble of fairly positive reaction towards the end." "And then the second, when they repeated it for 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." "And, in fact, that's a terrible problem" "In fact, that's a terrible problem these days with movies, because if you don't score in that first week, there's another movie coming in, and they take you out." "So there's no time for a movie to sit in a cinema anymore and get an audience." "And that means that original stuff is-- it's at a disadvantage." "'Cause I once said to a marketing man," ""What's the hardest type of movie to sell?"" "and he said, "Anything original."" "Connie and I had no idea that it was going to have the impact that it did." "I mean, I'd always assumed it might pick up half the Python audience." "And of course, the Python audience was not that huge;" "it was rather smart, because it was very much a comedy of ideas." "But "Fawlty Towers" was much more a comedy of emotion, and more people were able to plug into it." "So, as far as I remember, we got quite substantially bigger-- audience figures than Python." "But we had no idea." "We were just writing this little thing that we thought was funny." "And when you hear, years later, that it is liked all over the world, there's a kind of puzzlement about why it travelled." "And I guess the reason it travels, is that the characters are in some way archetypes." "They're the types who crop up in all the different cultures." "But I have to say, there's a slightly different reaction in this country from what there is in other countries." "In this country, a certain number of people assume that I must be Basil." "They do not see that this is kind of a performance." "They forget that Connie wrote it with me." "They kind of think that I wrote it, and I just wrote myself, and I performed myself." "This doesn't happen in other countries." "In America, for example, people accept that 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." "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 when you just laugh, and you laugh so much that it hurts." "And you wish that you could stop laughing." "Wonderful feeling." "You don't get that so much as you get older, although you get it a little bit, on stage." "Like, as a kid, you get it in church, because it's kind of forbidden, and that gives it an extra sweetness." "Similarly, on stage, if somebody breaks you up, that business about trying not to laugh, that gives it a certain sweetness." "And it can become almost convulsive again." "There was... an extraordinary... emotional reaction we used to have when we used to think of things that would happen to Basil." "Because in a sense, we were like gods, playing with this man's life." "And sometimes, when we would think of what would happen next, we would howl with laughter, and then we would think," ""Oh, poor man."" "You know?" "Because as somebody pointed out years ago, comedy is 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!"" "But we had that double reaction." "We laughed first, and then we would feel sorry for him." "Great comedy is always about things happening on different levels, because people say that comedy is about conflict." "And people often think that that means character "A"" "has got to be head to head with character "B."" "But the interesting conflicts are within people." "When something has happened which is absolutely terrible but they're having to pretend that it's fine." "But if you see them just thinking it's terrible, it's not funny." "It's the fact that they have to keep up the act." "So anytime that someone is doing something at one level and something almost contradictory, in conflict with it, is happening at another level, it's funny." "But the thing about farce is..." "The thing about farce is, that everything is happening in an exaggerated way." "That although you may start it quite low key, quite real, it kind of winds up, and people get more and more frantic." "They may be trying to keep the frantic feelings in, and present some sort of calm façade, to someone they have to impress, but you know that inside, they're like this-- and what I love is the intensity of the emotion," "because with that, comes more frantic behaviour, more energy, and the possibility of huge laughs." "I mean the best" "I think the best evenings of my life have almost all been spent at the National Theatre, when they do farces, like the Feydeau farces." "So, 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." "I thought it was wonderful when I heard "Fawlty Towers"" "was being used as a training film." "I think by the Hyatt chain, and one other chain, in London." "But it didn't really surprise me, because, you see, we started "Fawlty Towers"-- the first series is '75-- and Tony Jay, Peter Robinson, and Michael Peacock and I started Video Arts in '72," "so I'd already done quite a number of videos about customer relations, selling across the counter, selling services." "And I had a pretty good idea by that time of how you really were supposed to treat customers, so it was very simple doing the opposite with Basil." "And a lot of the time, it was absolutely as simple as that." "You knew what the rule was, and you broke it." "And sometimes, you find that things happen in hotels that are so wonderfully funny and creative, that you could never have thought of them." "My favourite one is-- you know when you arrive in a hotel, you have this utter..." "what's the word?" "delusion that the room is in some way yours." "Whereas, in fact, the hotel is full of people who want to get into the room." "They want to restock the minibar, they want to pull the curtains, they want to turn down your bed, they want to do-- so you have to remember, it's not your room." "You have to put up the "do not disturb" sign just to get any peace at all." "And on one occasion, I had about three interruptions, and I finally put up the "do not disturb" sign, and five minutes later, as I was lying on the bed doing a crossword" "I don't believe this." "So I go to the door, and I open the door, and there's a young man, bellhop, standing outside, pointing at the "do not disturb" notice, saying, "Is this supposed to be out here?"" "You couldn't, you know, you couldn't make that up." "And a time I stayed in the Randolph hotel in Oxford, and I'd had a very, very good dinner at Merton College, superb dinner, got in rather late, went off to sleep, with a late alarm call," "and at 5:45" ""Hello?" They said, "Mr. Cleese, your alarm call."" "and I said, "No, no." "It may well be somebody else's." "It is not mine, mine is 8:30, thank you."" "And you're just in that lovely dropping off" "You pick it up, and they say," ""Just to apologize for waking you up."" "You know, there's some things you could never invent." "At the beginning, I wrote most of Basil and most of Manuel." "Connie wrote most of Sybil and most of Polly, and I found it very interesting, 'cause I'd sometimes suggest lines for Sybil, and she'd say "No, no, a woman would never say that."" "And I'd think-- but gradually, she started to write more of Basil, and I started to write more of Sybil." "And then we just kind of-- cooperated, more and more, on all the characters." "Then, the one the two of us loved the most was the Major." "We love this guy who was in his own world." "He never quite understood what was going on, but always added his own insane interpretation of it." "And Ballard Berkeley, he's no longer with us;" "I was hugely fond of him." "He was a 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." "When I'd be in the rehearsal room, playing a scene with Sybil," "I'd glance over Sybil's shoulder, and I'd suddenly see Ballard doing this-- which meant that there were six Australian wickets down." "And he was-- I just loved that man." "And then the old ladies were absolutely terrific." "It was a very happy group, because everybody was very... pleased with what they had to do." "Nobody was trying to build their part up." "Everyone was happy, so that was good." "And then each week, you'd have some guests in." "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." "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'm going to do next,"" "if there's any doubt about what's happening in the plot." "She, in the pilot episode, was a philosophy student." "We didn't feel that worked as well as art student." "So we re-recorded just a little, maybe four or five minutes, and cut that into the first episode, before it was transmitted to the general public." "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." "I think 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." ""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." "You see, if she'd been hurt by them, then it wouldn't have worked." "There's a certain degree of discomfort that people can tolerate in comedy, but they don't want to see anybody in real pain, at least, not in this kind of comedy." "Probably not in any kind of comedy." "So, it was water off a duck's back." "She just didn't give a damn." "So, although the insults were funny, they were fundamentally ineffectual." "That's why we could get away with them." "I think that Pru began to develop her laugh-- and I think that she and I talked about it a bit at one point." "Because, I remember it was" "No, deeper than that-- and I described it in one script as somebody machine gunning a seal, which was a very good description." "I think that was something, again, we worked on." "That was the delight of going into the shows." "After we'd done one or two, we were able to borrow from what the actors and actresses were beginning to create." "We were beginning to incorporate that in the script." "Connie and I had a different conception" "I can't remember now, through the mists of time, what it was, but 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?"" "And her saying, "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, which we didn't have when we wrote the first one." "I'd seen Andrew in a marvellous play by John Mortimer called "Habeas Corpus."" "He had just made me laugh till I hurt." "And I realized how good he was at physical comedy." "So I got him, and he just-- this just touched something in him, because he's so quiet." "He's immensely thoughtful, an extraordinarily kind man, very considerate, and rather quiet, almost introverted." "And then you put that moustache on him, and he goes-- and this energy explodes, something just comes through, that you don't normally see." "One of the points I was trying to make with Manuel was not that Manuel was some kind of an idiot, 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 the chances of you getting what you ordered were about one in six." "And I knew what that was about." "That was not about the fact that foreigners were stupid." "it was about the fact that the owners were not prepared to pay proper salaries, so they got people who were desperate for any kind of work." "They did not bother to train them." "They did not bother to make sure that they could speak English properly." "And that was the fundamental joke about Basil and Manuel," "Because Manuel is one of the sweetest people-- he's always trying to get it right." "There's no way you can blame him, except, that his English is not quite as good as it might be." "And that's Basil's fault 'cause Basil doesn't pay to give him extra English lessons, as he should." "We saw Basil as... someone who was tremendously class conscious, who was always trying to become a little bit grand, who adopted attitudes of superiority over people that were really quite unjustified, and someone who was fundamentally terrified of his wife." "If you look at the episodes, they're almost all... fuelled... by the fact that he is trying to hide something from Sybil." "It's always struck me" "I don't know if the British newspapers carry this out, but people who aren't getting enough sex are fascinated by it." "Even if the fascination takes the form of being very, very cross, 'cause other people are getting some." "And that's obviously Basil's problem." "I mean, 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." "The essence of that was all about how disapproving he is, and how he tries to catch them at it." "I enjoy very much the degree of... how he gets worked up-- you know when people say, "I'm not a prude, but--"" "which always means, "I am a prude, and--"" "it was an exploration of all that stuff." "The episode in the first series-- it's about Basil's dislike of any kind of sexual behaviour at all." "There's some very, very good lines at the beginning about how people dress." "Sybil says Basil's idea of a sexy attractive man is Earl Haig." "And she points out that he did, actually, wear his decorations, which is quite interesting, 'cause it's all right, in the army, to have all these brightly coloured things on you, which is an interesting thought." "But the key to all that is Basil's utter embarrassment about any kind of talk about emotion." "And all his assumptions about what psychotherapy is good-- in the British press, still, you constantly see analysis and psychotherapy attacked for what it isn't." "It's very strange." "I suppose it's very hard for some people who haven't been through it to understand what the process is." "And maybe I've been lucky with the therapists that I've had, because there are bad therapists, the same way there are bad plumbers and bad doctors." "Because you had a bad doctor doesn't mean, necessarily, all orthodox medicine is rubbish." "The same way, if you've had a bad therapist, as I think Faye Weldon felt that her ex-husband had, it doesn't mean that all therapists and all psychotherapy is useless." "But it makes people anxious because people on the whole, do not want to look at themselves." "The first lesson in life, there's a small group of people who do want to look at themselves, but most people are pretty uncomfortable about it." "The presence of those two psychiatrists, brings out all Basil's fears, that somebody might actually start looking into what's going on inside him." "You really see what an awful man Basil is, because he has no interest in other human beings, as human beings, at all." "They're either objects of derision and scorn, or an opportunity to improve his position in the social hierarchy." "In this particular case, it's the professional hierarchy-- you know, can he get a good recommendation for his hotel?" "And I love the idea that by having different people arriving, and him never quite knowing which one of them was the inspector or not, he would switch from one way of addressing them, to another and back again," "without any kind of consistency." "So that you could see really what a bastard he was." "I mean, that's the thing about Basil, he's an absolutely awful human being." "But the strange thing about comedy is that if an awful character makes people laugh-- think of W.C. Fields-- people feel affectionate towards him." "It's insane." "Because if they had to sit next to him, for five minutes at a dinner, they would absolutely not be able to cope with him." "They would loathe him." "But because he makes them laugh, they think, deep down, he's all right, and he isn't." "When my friends and I started, on the whole, we had a slightly low opinion of catch phrases." "Because there used to be certain BBC radio comedy shows that consisted entirely of catch phrases." "You know, you'd hear the door open, and someone would come in and say," ""I won't take my coat off, I'm not stopping."" "and they'd be" "And it would go on for about four minutes." "When the laugh faded, another door would open, and someone would come in and say," ""I don't like cauliflower, I prefer the peas."" "So we got very fed up with it." "It seemed to us, it was nothing to do with comedy at all." "It was some kind of..." "in-joke that people enjoyed simply because they felt part of the in crowd." "It was nothing to do with humour at all." "But what happens, of course, is that, of course, dear Manuel says "qué?" a lot, 'cause he has no idea what's going on." "It was never intended to be a catch phrase." "What else would he say?" "Do you see what I mean?" "But sometimes I think we realized that "I am from Barcelona" kind of got funnier with repetition." "But there was almost no intention of creating catch phrases." "Oddly enough, the lines that I remember are very frequently not the ones that other people remember." "There's a line in the Whizzo chocolate factory sketch, about crunchy frogs, there's a line when Inspector Praline says," ""Where's the pleasure in that?"" "And that's a phrase that I often want to say to people." "When they talk about the fact they've been mountaineering for four weeks," "I always want to say, "Where's the pleasure in that?"" "and there's another one which is in the pet shop sketch, the dead parrot, when I say," ""I see, I see." "I get the picture."" "and I sometimes think of that." ""I see, I get the picture."" "But these are not the phrases that other people pick up." "And sometimes I discover that something's become a catch phrase, and I didn't even know it." "I think the great secret is that the scripts were very good." "And they were very good, I think, for two reasons." "One is, for a start, there was an awful lot in them." "the average BBC half hour, 65 pages." ""Fawlty Towers," we used to do 135 to 140 pages." "We literally did twice as many." "Camera cuts-- average show's got 200, we used to have 400 camera cuts." "So there was an enormous amount in them." "The other thing is, they were very well constructed." "What Connie discovered worked for us, was that we never started to write the dialogue, until we got the plot worked out." "So we would spend, sometimes, as much as two and a half weeks on a plot" "Not always the same one, 'cause if we got stuck, we'd sometimes put it to one side and pick up another one that we were halfway through and try and run with that" "But we never really bothered to write the dialogue, as I said, until we really got the story worked out in considerable detail." "You always have to change it a bit, 'cause you can never visualize it all when you've just got the story line there, and you'll find that one scene you'd imagined doesn't work because Basil comes into it" "in a different frame of mind, or in a different mood from what you need." "You're always having to change-- re-jig it a bit." "But that was the key" "We never started until we had the story, so we always knew where we were going." "Some people try to write comedy by starting" ""Scene One" and they start writing the dialogue." "Well, the chances of them getting to a satisfactory ending are one in 100." "You've gotta kind of know where you're going while you're building the thing." "One of the characteristics of those episodes is that there's always one... key idea." "But what we often tried to do," "Along with that key idea," "Was to have one or two other subplots," "Other threads running." "They would run parallel for a time." "And then, hopefully, they would become intertwined." "By the end, the last five minutes," "They would all come together." "That's what we managed to do in the best of the episodes." "But the most useful thing we used to do" "Was to ask people for ideas" "People who were in the business." "For example, Connie and I were on holiday," "In Monte Carlo for two weeks," "And we met a very nice woman" "Who was just sort of helping us with the hotel," "And we had coffee with her." "We said to her," ""what's the most difficult kind of guest that you have?"" "And she described Mrs. Richards" "Absolutely perfectly," "And we wrote it all down." "The fact that they always complained about everything," "But they don't want it changed, they just want a reduction;" "And this business of "strategic deafness,"" "Hearing what they want to hear." "She just gave us a character portrait." "Another time I said to a great friend of mine," "Called Andrew Leeman, who was a restaurateur," "I said, uh... "What was the worst problem you had" "When you used to work at the Savoy Hotel?"" "And he said, "Oh, the stiffs."" "I said, "What?"" "He said, "Oh, getting rid of the stiffs."" "I said, "Well, you mean people... died a lot?"" "And he said, "Oh, a lot, the old dears." "I'm afraid they know the Savoy will always treat them really well and do these things, so they would sometimes check in with a bottle of pills, take them in the night." "In the morning, the Savoy staff would walk in, pick up the phone, and say, "We've got another one."" "And then the problem was getting-- getting the stiffs into the service elevator, without alarming the other guests." "Well, once you've been given that-- that as an idea, I mean, it's kind of" "It's just wonderful." "Then you put a doctor in the hotel, it's a kind of a joy." "Some of those worked out very well." "it's interesting because sometimes-- we had a wonderful ending for the dead body one, and we couldn't use it." "The guy who died and who gets put in the baskets and all that stuff" "We thought it would be terribly funny if we'd establish, without Basil knowing, that he had a twin brother." "So after Basil had finally got him in the basket, the twin brother would walk in and come up to the desk, and Basil would abuse him." "This mindless practical joke." "And we couldn't do it because there was no way of Basil telling the twin-- that his brother was dead." "You couldn't do that in a comedy show, you see what I mean?" "So it was a great shame." "It would have been too difficult, mixing that kind of emotion." "Timing is all important." "The hardest thing is to get it well enough rehearsed." "Now, five days was never really enough-- plus the day in the studio-- to get it right." "And what happened was that we did anything between 20 and 25 hours editing on each show." "Almost every minute you see up on the screen, we spent one hour editing." "And it was only by doing that, that you could just tighten it up, just tighten it there, and take out a line of dialogue there;" "sometimes take out a repetition there, then lose two lines of dialogue there;" "that's what really got the pace on it." "And there wasn't time to get it that good, in terms of just the rehearsal period, and the studio recording." "It felt to me, very much like a team." "Because, in the first series, John Howard-Davies, second series, Bobby Spiers, and Pru, and Andrew and Connie and I, listened to each other a great deal." "And people-- you know, if I was doing a scene, with..." "let's say..." "with Sybil, with Pru, then Connie and Andrew would just sit there, watching, and after a time, they might" " Andrew might say," ""What about that?" or "That isn't quite working."" "But because Connie and I had written, and then rewritten the script, there wasn't an enormous amount of script rewriting." "They were more or less right most of the time." "But how we did them, was very much a cooperative thing, with lots of suggestions coming in." "I just did an American show, "Third rock from the sun,"" "and it was lovely." "It was just like "Fawlty Towers" again, with about six key people giving ideas." "And nobody bothering whether their idea was accepted or not." "It was just that sense of making it as good as possible." "All the BBC shows, at that time, were always recorded with a live audience." "It was kind of understood that you didn't use any kind of sweetening." "You didn't use any kind of canned laughter." "We did sometimes." "And I'll tell you what we did" "Occasionally you would have something on film, and the audience would, of course, have to watch that on the monitors." "That would cut back to the studio, and the audience would still be watching the monitors, and they would fail to see that we were supposed to be back in the studio." "And sometimes you would find that there would be a complete silence after a joke, 'cause the audience is looking in the wrong place." "Or they're still looking in the studio, when they should be looking at the monitor." "Then we used to take one of our own laughs, off the soundtrack and put it in that place" "If it needed it." "I said to the actors, very early on" "I had a theory about this" "I said, "We're not gonna play this at the pace of the studio audience."" "I said, "We don't have to."" "In the theatre, you have to go at the pace of the audience, because they can't hear you otherwise." "You have to wait for that laughter to curve, you know, the laughter curve to come down." "Then you start speaking again." "But, in television, you have this wonderful thing called a microphone that's there, and if you talk into the mike, while the audience is still laughing, then the wonderful thing is, the people at home can hear it," "so you can keep the pace up, and when the people are watching at home, there's only one or two of them." "It's not like being in the audience in a theatre." "So they don't laugh as much." "What you have to do is play it faster when people are at home in ones and twos, than you ever would if you were doing it in front of a full audience." "So we deliberately ignored the studio audience, and tried to play it faster than was right for the studio audience, in order to get the sufficiently rapid pace for the people at home." "The second show that we did, which was about the builders, was performed almost entirely to complete silence." "and it was not a very comfortable experience." "Afterwards I was a bit disturbed." "People said, "No, no, it was a funny show."" "Actually, I think it's the least good of the 12 shows." "They said, "No, it was fine, it was funny."" "I said, "Well, what about the audience?"" "They said, "We don't know." We found out later, that a large number of people from the Icelandic Broadcasting Corporation had visited the BBC that day" "The BBC were always helpful to shows like mine-- thought, wouldn't it be nice if we put all 70 of them in the front row?" "And they sat there, being very pleasant and charming and Icelandic, and not laughing at all." "Just this faint whiff of cod coming from the front row, which, had we recognized, might have given us the explanation." "I've got to say, it was a pretty tough recording." "And it needed quite a lot of editing to tighten it up." ""Fawlty Towers" took a little time to get started." "It didn't pick up a very big audience, the first series." "It's suddenly, on the repeats." "You got the impression something was happening." "Some kind of groundswell of approval was happening." "The critics... began to quite like it, towards the end of the first series." "And after that, on the whole, the criticisms were very good." "But Connie and I found doing the second series probably as difficult as anything we'd done." "Because the hardest thing in this business is to deal with unreal expectations." "The problem with "Fierce Creatures"" "was not "Fierce Creatures."" "The problem with "Fierce Creatures" was "A Fish Called Wanda."" "People thought not only that it was going to be as funny-- which is unlikely, because at the time, it was arguably as successful as any British film ever made, so lightning was not likely to strike" "in the same place twice" "But there was also a feeling it would be in the same style, and because it was not in the same style, people couldn't see what style it was in." "The problem we have with the second series of "Fawlty Towers" is that the expectation was unreasonably high." "I realized that people were already remembering the first series as better than it was." "Because if there's three or four things in the first series, that are really funny, the audience remembers that as the kind of general standard, rather than the highlights." "Then they expect the second series to be at the highlight level all the way through." "So it was a huge effort to get those scripts as good as I think they finally were-- about six weeks each." "If you think about farce, because of the high level of energy, the kind of mania involved, people have to get very wound up." "It's easier to do that in the context of subjects that make people particularly anxious, which usually means taboo." "So if you look at a lot of "Fawlty Towers" episodes, you'll find that one's about dead bodies;" "one's about rats, which people are like that about;" "one's about a woman who pretends that she's deaf;" "it's a little bit dodgy here and there, there's a lot of taboo in there." "Anybody in comedy knows that if you get into taboo areas, if it's done right, two thing happen, which are both good." "One is that you are exploring something that is a little unfamiliar and a little dangerous and a little exciting, and therefore, a little bit interesting." "And secondly, it arouses a degree of anxiety, which means that people laugh more." "I mean, the basis of sexual jokes, 99% of which are not the slightest bit funny, is that they harness people's anxiety and embarrassment about sex, so that they get big laughs." "As I say, very few of them," "I think, are actually funny." "In the whole 12 episodes, there are only two jokes the BBC ever objected to." "I think Bill Cotton was worried about two." "One had already been cut." "And the other one I was very unsure about." "I think it was a reference... to one of the concentration camps." "Just when Basil was getting very confused, the word popped up." "I was not very sure about it myself." "When Bill said, "Can you-- I'm worried about that."" "I just cut it." "But we didn't have any pressure." "And the P.C. Lobby, the politically correct lobby is something I don't understand." "A lot of what I see on television now, both here and in America, seems to me much riskier than we would have gotten away with, even in the Python days." "And then at the same time, you hear about these politically correct movements which I think are by and large, run and staffed largely by obsessions." "There's a good idea at the back of political correctness, but it gets taken ad absurdum." "And I think that the danger is this:" "If you're in a group of people, and you find that one person is particularly touchy, they have difficulty controlling their emotions, greater difficulty than the other people in the group, then you can't have so much fun about them," "because they're touchy, and they're likely to explode." "So when they're around, you're not as relaxed." "You're not as spontaneous, you can't be more real." "You have to kind of be more formal." "If you find that society is being run by the touchiest members, then, in a sense, that's a bit sick." "Because you're trying to take, as the general standard, the standard of the people who have the greatest problem controlling their emotions in that area." "In that Anniversary program," "Basil is actually thinking of someone else, for a short period of time, before the panic overtakes him." "You do get the impression that there is something positive, underneath all the other stuff, between him and Sybil." "Connie and I particularly liked that episode, because we felt we were beginning to explore character a little bit more, it was a little less farcical." "I remember we thought it was a little bit more in the area of Allan Ayckbourn, whom we both adored." "We liked that episode a lot." "And the great joy of it was, we had much longer to rehearse it than we normally did." "Because we got about five days into rehearsal, and a splendid thing happened." "A BBC executive got into an argument with a rigger-- someone who puts the lights up, and eventually punched him." "and the unions went on strike, and we couldn't record the program on the ordinary day." "It was postponed." "They settled the strike and everything was put off a week." "And Julian Holloway was unable to do the second week, 'cause he had another commitment, and we brought in dear Ken Campbell, whom I've always adored." "He's such a marvellous-- strange, funny man." "So he was the only one who was new." "We had all this time to rehearse it." "It was really, really good, because everyone was able to get familiar with the show, and then bring little things to it." "I think it's one of the very best episodes." "I watched "Basil The Rat" last Sunday as part of a sort of fundraising thing, and I was very, very pleased with it." "There's a particular scene at the end, when he and Manuel are talking to a young couple and they're really not taking in anything the young couple is saying." "They're just trying to see where the rat is, and I thought it was extraordinarily funny." "Yet I couldn't explain quite why I found it so funny." "And I love the denouement, the way that we finally get" "Polly presenting the box of biscuits and there's the little rat looking cute at the inspector." "And Basil actually says," ""Would you care for rat?"" "'Cause what else do you say there?" "And the actor-- damn, I forgot his name, he's so good-- who just looks at the rat, and absolutely doesn't believe it." "He knows it's not there, although he can see it." "And he plays that so well." "And then right at the end you see Basil being dragged out." "I'm very, very fond of that episode, because, again, there's quite a lot in it." "There's some very good lines early on." "I love when Manuel, of course, thinks that it's "A filigree Siberian hamster."" "and Basil persuades him it's a rat." "He says, "Don't you have rats in Spain, or did Franco have them all shot?"" "That's one of my favourite lines." "When we started writing "The Kipper and the Corpse,"" "we started with the idea of getting rid of a dead body, and I was fascinated by the idea of trying to get Basil very happy about the fact someone had died." "We came up with the idea that he thought he'd poisoned him, and when he discovered he hadn't poisoned him, he'd be really happy and then the doctor could walk in when he was ranting, "I'm so happy, I'm so happy!"" "Again, utter ruthless selfishness." "No thought for this guy or his family at all." "It was just-- is he on the hook or is he off the hook?" "As I say, he's a terrible man." "The 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." "We tried beating it with a fairly rigid branch, and it wasn't funny at all." "We tried beating it with a floppy branch, and that didn't work." "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." "People always talk about it in the abstract, as though any branch would've been funny." "Similarly, when he's cursing the car, it is much funnier that that sound is kind of contained, as though it's coming from inside a sort of goldfish bowl, than if you heard it at full volume" "from inside the car." "And often you don't know why these things are the case, you just have to stumble around, trying things until you discover what works." "The key to Basil is the snobbery, and therefore, we thought that in the first episode, someone who was pretending to be a lord and who wasn't, would take advantage of Basil in a particularly endearing way." "And Michael Gwynn, who did the part, was not only excellent, he was very funny." "He told me about a hotel or lodging house he used to stay with." "And they had so many signs up." "You know, switch the light off and do this and don't do that." "And no things allowed here." "He realized that if you followed all the signs, if you carried out all the commands issued by the signs, they wouldn't need any staff in the hotel at all." "I always remember him saying that, it was a wonderful insight." "But that was a very experimental episode," "I remember I was very pleased with the way that it had gone." "Connie was... very happy with the overall show," "But wasn't very happy about a couple of the little bits with her as the philosopher." "I said don't worry, we can redo those, the main thing is we basically got the show right." "And one or two of my closest friends who know my work well, were very pleased with it and encouraged me a lot." "So I felt that we were all right." "We were onto something good." "So many people have said to me, are you going to do any more "Fawlty Towers"?" "And you're up against an expectat" "I could not win." "I could not win." "If I had to go back now," "I think I probably would not do "Fierce Creatures."" "You're up against an expectation that absolutely cannot be matched." "And the thing is, do something different." "I like working with the same team again and again, because if you have a good team, why break it up?" "But the fact is, the same team brings the same expectation." "Also trying to make "Fawlty Towers" work at 90 minutes, would be very difficult." "Because, as I said earlier, you can build it like that-- for 30 minutes, but if you're in a movie, then there has to be a trough and then another peak, it doesn't interest" "I had an idea for a plot," "I love the idea of Basil being finally invited to Spain to meet Manuel's family, and getting to Heathrow, then spending about 14 hours there, waiting for the flight." "Then finally getting on the flight, being furious, and then... a terrorist... pulls a gun... and tries to hijack the plane, and Basil is so angry, he overcomes the terrorist." "When the pilot says..." ""We have to fly back to Heathrow,"" "Basil says, "No-- fly us to Spain, or I'll shoot you."" "Arrives in Spain, immediately arrested." "Spends the entire holiday in a Spanish jail, is released in time to go back on the plane with Sybil." "But, it's funny, isn't it?" "But..." "I don't..." "I don't want to do it." "Welcome, Prunella Scales, to this fabulous DVD." "Now the first question is, how were you chosen for the part of Sybil?" "And what were your first impressions of the part?" "I really don't know." "I think John Howard-Davies suggested me." "And I went along to see John in his flat, and he was in bed with flu, and I was sort of shown into the room." "He said is there anything you want to ask me about the script?" "And I said, "Well, yeah." "Why did they ever get married?"" "And he sort of put a pillow over his head and said," ""Oh God, I was afraid you were going to ask that."" "And he couldn't tell me." "But, of course, we talked about it." "I think it was probably-- may have been-- my idea that she should be a bit less posh than him." "Because we couldn't see otherwise what would have attracted them to each other." "I think I had a sort of vision of her family being in catering on the South Coast, you know?" "And her working behind a bar somewhere," "He being demobbed from his national service, and getting his gratuity, you know?" "And going in for a drink, and there's quite obviously a barmaid behind the bar, and she fancies him because he was so posh." "And they sort of thought they'd get married and run a hotel together." "It was all a bit romantic and idealistic." "And the grim reality then caught up with them-- that was the thought." "Did you do much research for the role?" "Was Sybil based on any characters you knew in your own life?" "Not any one specific person, no." "I think all the things you do... you use certain bits from, probably, singularly inappropriate people that you've met during your life, and it blends into one." "There was a woman who ran a hotel... that my parents stayed in once." "She used to lean over the chair and say," ""Do you find that tasty, Major?"" "and I think that was the sort of... tune in my head, maybe." "Did you get any feedback about your interpretation of Sybil from genuine hoteliers?" "Everybody I've ever met in the hotel business loves it." "But I think that is very much due to the writing." "I think they're extremely meticulous people," "John and Connie." "It was very, very, very well researched." "And written with great passion from deep anger, about 12 aspects of hotel management." "And once they had written an episode on each one of those... angers, they'd expiated their wrath and didn't need to do any more." "Of course, they were under appalling pressure to do a longer series, but they, I think, very laudably, stuck out against that." "Have you ever felt the high profile of "Fawlty Towers"" "has overshadowed the achievements of your subsequent career in any way?" "Oh, I hope not." "I think in this business, it's extremely lucky to be associated with a successful television series, because it does mean people take the giant step off the pavement into the building to see what you're gonna do next." "It means that... you can, up to a point, choose your parts in the live theatre, and also-- or even in television again, and that if people have enjoyed you in one thing, and it's been successful" "and it's got the figures, management are quite keen to employ you as well." "It does broaden your choice." "Has starring in the show ever impinged on your personal life in any way?" "No." "Not at all." "Not at all." "I'm not a bit like her." "I think the media was extremely disappointed to find that I'm not." "But, sorry, you know, I'm not." "How did you enjoy working with the other members of the "Fawlty Towers" cast?" "I adored them all." "It was a magnificent cast." "Absolutely wonderful right the way through." "I can't say it was a-- idyllically happy time, because it was such hard work, you didn't have time to think whether you were happy or not." "It was just a question of getting the lines learned by Wednesday morning, and rehearsing your knickers off until we actually recorded it on Sunday night." "Very, very, very, hard graft-- the formula, anyway, in this country." "I think in America they have at least two weeks for a half hour episode, and in this country we only get a week, even in the most successful BBC product." "Certainly John was extremely rigorous, and he used every second of that limited time." "And was quite cross on the Wednesday morning, if you didn't know it perfectly." "Quite rightly, too." "There was some sexual chemistry between you and Nicky Henson, the leather trouser wearing man in "The Psychiatrist"." "May I ask, the sign on the chain by the Egyptian fertility symbol, what is that?" "It's..." "Greek astrological sign." "Oh, it's beautiful." "Where did you get it?" "Um..." "Colchester, I think." "Colchester?" "Oh, hello, can I speak to John Lawson, please?" "Oh, all right, I'll hold on." "What about the sexual chemistry between me and Nicky Henson?" "The sexual chemistry between me and Nicky Henson is sort of normal, friendly, loving, actor relationship." "Yes, I think Sybil-- the character, Sybil, was certainly... vulnerable to... and a bit pushed for sexual fulfilment, in view of the neurosis of her husband." "I don't think she ever would've seduced a guest." "Probably too professional for that, 'cause I'm sure she was born in the business." "Do you have any particular memories of working alongside of the old ladies?" "Gilly Flower and Renee Roberts?" "Did you know that there's a psychiatrist staying?" "Yes, yes, I did." "Has he come for the Major?" " What?" " Has he come for the Major?" " No." " Oh, good." "We were rather worried." "I'm sure they have them in Birmingham, too." "God bless them." "They're no longer with us." "But they were just wonderful, highly professional, absolute darlings, you know?" "Just good old pros." "They were magnificent, yes." "Lovely." "How do you feel "Fawlty Towers"" "fits in with sitcom history?" "Do you think it was one of those shows that pushes the boundaries of the genre?" "Or do you think it was more in the traditional mould?" "It seems to have made it, doesn't it?" "Because it's just won the most popular sitcom of all time." "The thing that I'm really proud of in it, is that it hasn't got slow, because usually, when you see... sitcoms made 10 or 15 or even 20 years ago, they may be charming and amusing," "but the pace usually seems terribly slow." "And I'm very proud to say that that is neither true of "Marriage Lines", which I did with Richard Briers many years before we did-- we did "Fawlty Towers", or of "Fawlty Towers"." "I think they're still quite fast, both of them." "But then, John is a highly original person." "I think, probably, it is a classic, in the real sense of the word, that it has something to say to people." "It still has something to say to people." "I hope still will, many years hence." "No, no." "No, I'm sorry, but no." "Nope, nope." "No, look, I'm not going to do it this week." "No, I'm sorry." "The series ended last week." "I know the contract said six, but there was a strike, and that wasn't my fault, was it?" "You've got to have something-- what about edited motocross highlights?" "Or "Horse of the Year Show", or "Inter-counties' Basket Weaving"?" "Well, how about a cheap tatty review?" "All right, if that suits you." "Cheap tatty review then." "Stand by... and..." "Cue!" "Woodburn Grange Country Club" "The Grange" " Fawlty Towers was demolished." "Bought by developers after the fire in 1991 it was soon flattened to make way for eight new houses, despite the existing planning permission for a 39 bed hotel." ""Polly!" "What have you done to my hotel?"" "At 3:30, John Cleese is Basil Fawlty, in "Fawlty Towers"." "It's been an interesting 15 years, but all good things must come to an end." "I hope you enjoy you new welco" "Aw, fuck!" "Don't be ridiculous, Basil." "Get away from this door, and don't you dare try and come in here tonight!" "Manuel, it's a rat." " "Pigeon"." " That's a rat." "No, no, no." "Is hamster." "It's a rat!" "Of course it's a rat." "You have rats in Spain, don't you?" "Or did Franco have them all shot?" "Is pigeon." "It's a rat!" "No, it's not a pigeon, it's a hamster." "Ladies and gentlemen, we're having 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." "Mr. Thurston is the gentleman" "I'm dealing with at the moment." "What?" "Mr. Richards is the gentle-- oh, fuck!" "Shit." "Shit!"