Fawlty Towers is 50 years old. I know because it said so in the Guardian today. An institution, widely credited as the greatest sitcom of all time, and probably loved by many. I remember pissing myself at the swivelling rat in the biscuit box at the end of the Rat episode. Maybe you were like me and had the audio cassettes which were played on repeat in long journeys like anti smoking devices, until the dialogue was hammered into your cortex, to remain there forever?
“Is this a piece of your brain?”
The fragments of script come back at me from the most unlikely of prompts.
It is a source of almost unending richness, clearly honed and honed until perfection. Even the names –
Basil=Sabil, Sybil=Bysil – a tight contortion of false anagram and Notlob palindrome.
Manuel, the manual labourer.
Polly, the polyglot, capable of all
Major, the constant minor character
Miss Gatsby, heiress to the F Scott Fitzgerald legacy of faded gilded age splendor
Miss Tibbs, the grey furry tabby
I could go on. I probably will. It’s an achievement of monumental wonder, crystalizing the post-imperial English angst, the damaged psyche, that still touches at the heart of the British condition.
Or it’s just a bunch of laughs, thrown together. Don’t take it too seriously. After all, “Voom! What was that ? That was your life, mate. That was quick, do I get another ? Sorry mate, that’s your lot”
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/sep/19/fawlty-towers-greatest-ever-sitcom-50-years-on
Don’t mention Major Gowan’s memories of taking a woman friend to a cricket match … the BBC mentioned it once (or twice) and I think they got away with it (at the time)
“I called her Winnie… because she reminded me of Winnie”
“I knew a woman once…I took her to the Oval…we were playing India!”
Just to put this in context – this wasn’t an anecdote about a date – the Major was saying he’d only known one woman in his entire life.
Major: “I knew a woman once, I took her to see India.”
Fawlty: “India Major?”
Major: “At the Oval.”
Yes – quite right.
“and what did you expect to see out of a Torquay Hotel bedroom window?”
Yes, Fawlty Towers (alongside huge lumps of Monty Python, Young Ones, Blackadder, and Bottom (and others) are hard-wired to be accessed and recited or paraphrased as the situation demands
Then may I suggest you move to a hotel closer to the sea?
OR PREFERABLY IN IT?”
If only hotels could be run for profit without any guests at all.
Not forgetting Hancock and particularly The Blood Donor. I was at the hospital a few months ago and the doctor was talking about taking bloods before a procedure and I said ” do I get a badge”? I think he was too young to get the reference so probably thought I was nuts.
I went to give blood, carrying the book I was reading, a biography of Hancock. The guy on the desk deadpanned, “You can’t bring that in here.”
Blood donor is spoilt for me because the lad himself is clearly reading all his lines from prompts all over the place. The Bedsitter is the masterpiece for me.
IIRC, our man was involved in a bad car smash shortly before filming, and didn’t have time to learn his lines. TV schedules being what they were, the show had to go on regardless.
Yes, the unseen cue cards do spoil his performance, but it is still top-drawer stuff. “A PINT?!”, “We’re not all Rob Roy”, etc.
For me though, peak Hancock is The Missing Page, which features the best-ever title for a book: Kiss The Blood Off My Hands.
From an interview with Barry Cryer.
“Shortly before The Blood Donor episode of Hancock’s Half Hour in 1961, Tony had a car crash and emerged with two black eyes. Tony said he couldn’t do the recording that week because of the black eyes. A nurse looked at his eyes and said, ‘Oh, we can clear those by Friday.’
Tony was losing his excuses. He then said, ‘My memory is gone. I can’t learn it this week.’ So they gave Tony cue cards with his lines written on. If you watch The Blood Donor, Tony is gazing thoughtfully into the distance as he speaks, every so often looking at the cue cards. From then on, he never learned a script; he always insisted on cue cards.”
@Captain-Darling
By D’Arcy Sarto
“Put that pen down, we knowyouz’re in there!”
My fave Hancock episode, too
Aah, that explains something. When I went into the pub after work a group of blokes at the bar were discussing The Wicker Man, which moved on to Some Mothers Do ‘Ave Em (the link being Michelle Dotrice through Edward Woodward), and then an extended seminar on Fawlty Towers. By that time I had retreated to a table with a nice glass of Belgian cherry lambic.
I think we’re just out of waldorfs
I had a big book of all the scripts – I don’t think I have read and re-read any book as much as that one.
The Hotel Inspectors featured an incredibly tedious and pompous character played by Bernard Cribbins. He was very high maintenance and said things like “it matters not one whit” and described a TV show he wanted to watch in the lounge as a “televisual feast”. Basil thought he was one of three Hotel Inspectors he’d heard had been doing the rounds in Torquay – but it turns out he was just a sales rep selling spoons.
The unforgettable final scene features a busy lobby and the man checking out of the hotel. still loudly complaining – as he had done throughout his stay. Manuel asks him just to wait for a moment because “Mr Fawlty wants to say adios”. Enter Basil who pummels him with numerous custard pies – including one down his trousers and one in his briefcase. He is physically pushed to the main door by a cheerful Basil. The man is so shocked by this that he cannot speak and just leaves.
We then see Basil approach the desk, look up and say “Now then …what can I do you for you three gentlemen?”. The episode ends with a half-second of Basil’s horrified realisation that these men are the real Inspectors.
“SP…OOO…OOO…OOONS!!!”
*covered in spittle*”I beg your pardon?”
“I understand you sell spoons?”
“Yes, er, that’s right, er”
“How fascinating. How fascinating! So much more exciting than being a
Also ‘Why don’t you talk properly?”
‘I’m not a violent man, Mr Fawlty…’
(Fawlty, having been thumped, and on the floor out of shot behind the reception desk) ‘Oh yes you are’
And yes, that half second shriek of realisation into the faces of the real inspectors just as the credits roll. Superbly timed.
It’s worth mentioning, as I found out from the excellent Rule of Three podcast, that Fawlty Towers had about twice as much dialogue as other sitcoms because they purposely didn’t allow for laughs. In that scene, the audience are still (understandably) laughing at Bernard Cribbins with pie in his face and crotch, with a briefcase full of ‘a pint of best quality cream’ according to the script, when we miss this parting message from Basil as he ushers Mr Hutchison to the door:
“Now go away. If you ever come back I shall kill you”.
“You look happy Basil”.
“No dear, I’m not happy”.
Also, “If you know, why does she keep telling you?”.
“Yes, one of the guests has just died”
Would you like the fruit salad?
No.
Oh, that is a shame, the chef has just opened the tin.
My favourite line.
All of the above, and also: “Apparently there was a lot of bloodshed at the Nell Gwynn Tea Rooms”
This FT event is happening in Ottawa, will probably be terrible, or maybe very good?
https://faultytowers.ca/ottawa/?tx_inline_iframe=%2Fdate-selection&tx_sessionDataId=965c1191-40ff-47ac-94ab-b3c16d992f91
Duck surprise on the menu?
Ratatouille?
Waldorf Salad?
Prawn Goebbels?
🙂
“Depression is a bad thing. It’s like a virus. It takes over the mind, and then one day you can’t face life any more”
“And then you open a hotel”.
Sybil: What are we going to do [about the money Mrs Richards claims has been stolen]?
Basil: Oh, she’s left it in her room, or she’s dropped it or eaten it or something.
Spoilt brat who wants salad cream: That’s puke, that is.
Basil: Well at least it’s fresh puke.
Sybil: What are we going to do?
Basil: Give it another 15 years?
Sybil: About the money?
The little conversational sidetracks are the equivalent of George Martin sticking a bit of harpsichord into a Beatles song – not noticed on first hearing, but so good on the 15th.
Just now watching Fawlty Towers The Play on UK Gold.
3 episodes mashed up into West End Farce type format.
All the lines you expect, and still as funny as …
@Rigid-Digit
Despite the show’s oft-cited Feydau influences, resisted the urge to see the stage show in the West End – too much other stuff worth seeing to justify the time and expense and time),
Had relatives over who were big FT fans so we all watched last night
Thought the three main characters – BF, SF and Polly, plus the Bernard Cribbins character were great.
The guy who played Manuel?- Well let’s just say it’s unlikely if Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross will be troubling his answer machine.
Surprised that a lot of people have commented they didn’t like JC’s physical comedy in the TV show. The stage show would have fallen a bit flat without it.
As I didn’t really know of Feydeau when FT was on I always equated it with those Brian Rix farces which always seemed to be on in the sixties.
“I can’t abide cruelty to living creatures”
“I’m a creature and you can abide it to me”
“You’re not living”
You’re all horribly wrong, according to a notably po-faced young thing spotted on Threads this morning. Apparently it’s racist, sexist, ableist, and just not funny dammit. It would never be made today (probably true – I’m sure Cleese would agree.) Apparently the Major utters the n-word at some point. Can this be true? I don’t remember it.
Yes, he does say the n-word in that sequence about his female companion at the cricket match. She used the word to describe the Indian players and he sternly corrected her – but then brightly suggests another disgracefully racist term instead.
If it has been edited out, it’s really no loss overall.
I’m going to put my head up over the parapet and say that the last time I watched FT, probably the mid 90s, I no longer found them funny. Reading through the lines here, they work on their own quite well but Cleese shouting and rushing around just irritates me.
I’ll join you on that parapet, I much preferred Ripping Yarns and Rutland Weekend Television at the time.
The ‘Paul’ and ‘George’ to Cleese’s John.
I think there’s a lot in what you say. Take away the laughter track, and it’s actually a desperately awful scenario, where nobody is at ease unless they are away from the hotel – for golfing or celebrating Manuel’s birthday. Anyone except Basil of course, whonever escapes, and merely gets to beat his clapped out Austin 1100 with a branch in exasperated failure. It’s a vision of hell where even the momentary joy of the horse race winnings is snatched from him.
The Builders episode was apparently filmed to a live audience that was largely a touring group from Iceland with very few of them versed in conversational English. Cleese didn’t know this and the lack of laughs made him think, mid-show, that it wasn’t as good as he thought it was.
In any case, the Builders episode (dependent on Irish sterotypes) is one of the misfires, I think.
Cleese’s shouting and rushing around was, I think, at least half the comedic appeal of FT. For all the quality of the writing, pure old fashion slapstick is key to the show. Cleese’s physical performance, all angular awkwardness, is priceless. ‘Who’s this then?..look, I’ll do the funny walk..’ is the most widely remembered part of The Germans episode for example, even if it’s just his Python Ministry of Silly Walks routine in a different guise.
My favourite FT moment is a piece of simple slapstick – the moose head , when Basil finally gets round to hanging it on the wall. And it immediately drops off. hits him and he collapses. Silly, I know, but the 14 year old me found it utterly hilarious at the time , and it still makes me grin.
Almost certainly my favourite piece of TV is Sybil lying in a separate bed, alternately taking a drag on a cigarette and eating chocolates, while talking to Audrey on the phone. A distillation of awfulness. “Oh Audrey, I know.”
Sybil can you please understand before one of us dies.
Basil if you are going to grope a woman you could at least have the decency to do it from the same room
Brilliantine stick insect.”
“She’s got agoraphobia and claustrophobia. It’s very difficult
to get the space right for her…”
Not quite right Jaygee. In fact, while we’re at it, that whole monologue is worth quoting:
Old people are wonderful when they have so much life, aren’t they? Gives us all hope, doesn’t it? My mother on the other hand is a little bit of a trial, really. You know, it’s all right when they have the lifeforce, but Mother – well, she’s got more of the deathforce really. She’s a worrier. She has these, well, morbid fears they are, really. Vans is one. Rats. Doorknobs. Birds. Heights. Open spaces. Confined spaces. It’s very difficult getting the space right for her really, you know. Footballs. Bicycles. Cows. And she’s always on about men following her, I don’t know what she thinks they’re going to do to her. Vomit on her, Basil says.
Cheers for that, G.
Absolutely brilliant piece of writing.Not one word wasted. Prunella Scales’ delivery of the lines JC had written was every bit as magnificent
Not forgetting Connie Booth.
I’ve not forgotten Connie Booth @hubert-rawlinson
@freddy-steady I should have said this was a reply to @Jaygee that CB was also responsible for the writing.
Ah. I was being a tiny bit non-pc I guess but acknowledge your point!
Excerpt from JC’s book on FT in today’s Times. He and CB apparently collaborated on the episodes’ structures while JC wrote the dialogue.
I thought so but couldn’t find proof.
And here’s the clip.
Given CB’s subsequent career path – she became a psychothrtapist – it’s not hard to think she might have had a hand in writing this.
‘is there a French restaurant?’
‘Well you could try France, if you go now the tide is out’
‘I expected a room with a view’
‘Happy dear? I remember that’
The best sitcom ever – no argument Still endures today.
It’s your favourite you mean. I think there can be arguments for others. They only made 12 episodes and the second series was not as good as the first for me. I would rate Dad’s Army above it for one. 80 pretty consistent episodes. And Bilko (The Phil Silvers Show), 2 shows with military connections. Interesting…
I didn’t get where I am today by not knowing my favourite 70’s sitcom.
Another candidate. Also Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads.
I have to throw Blackadder into the mix.
Ignoring the first series, which didn’t quite work (which I think they all recognised), it is terrific comedy, and Rowan Atkinson’s performance is one for the ages.
Highlights: every time Rik Mayall turned up to steal the entire show from the ace cast, Bob (and RA’s delivery of the word “Bob”), Queenie, “You’ve got all your patter worked out”/”No, this is spontaneous. It’s called wit”, “Now, how much for a Good. Hard. Shag?”, etc.
Oh, and the final episode is one of the best endings of any TV show of any kind.
Yes we’re talking about the top three, hard to separate. Fawlty Towers, Blackadder and Dad’s Army are so good I couldn’t choose them.
Yup, tp 3 in any chosen order.
Can I throw in The Young Ones (and I know some of it dates badly) and Reginald Perrin as options for positions 4 and 5
Agree with all those but I need to mention Father Ted also. Outside of the main 4 characters there are many others who populated their world. My favourites being the permanently injured John & Mary who run the local general store. They utterly despise each other and instantly turn into a happy, lovely couple in the presence of other people, particularly Ted.
Mary (hisses) you’ve got a face like a pair of tits!
John (snarling) well at least that’s one pair between us!
Galton and Simpson and Clement and
La Frenais surely deserve their own spaces in the top 10
One of either Steptoe/Hancock ((for G and S) and Porridge/WHT The Likely Lads (for
C and LF) would surely be shoe ins
I don’t have much time for Blackadder or Dad’s Army. I found them occasionally funny, but mostly not. Instead, My top three are Fawlty Towers and The Office tying for the number one spot, with Peep Show taking the bronze.
@Gary
Excellent calls on the office and peep show – genuinely groundbreaking comedies.
While maybe not top five or 10, League of Gentlemen and Nighty Night would surely breeze into the top 20
@dai. Yes obviously my favourite or I wouldnt have made the comment. All the comments on here are subjective.
Dad’s army didn’t do it for me although my brother and my dad loved it.
Fools and horses did it and Steptoe and til death us do part.
Warren Mitchell had great comic timing and a very funny script.
(Doting mother regarding her pain in the arse son…) “he’s very clever… rather highly strung!”
Basil…”yes he should be…”
Always works for me!
My favourite episode is ‘The Builders’.
Basil marching off with the gnome… ”Just off to see Mr. O’Reilly, dear!’
Here’s a thing, in one episode (might be the first one) Basil’s reading a pools coupon and so, with far too much time on my hands, I froze the screen and the date on it was a Saturday in January 1974.
So, assuming that piece of paper was current, the whole thing must have been quite a long time in production / post-production.
Is that right? If so, no wonder it’s finely tuned.
First episode (pilot) recorded Christmas Eve 1974, the rest in spring 75.
First broadcast September 75
“I hope you haven’t been betting again Basil”
“No dear, that avenue of pleasure has been closed off”
“And we don’t want it opened up again, do we”
“No dear, you don’t”.
Am I alone in finding Sybil scarily attractive?
Not at all. In a similar vein, with the benefit of hindsight you can see that Margo Leadbetter was much more sexy than Barbara Good.
And since we’re all doing it: “I’m a doctor! I’m a doctor and I want my sausages!”
“When I get them at home, Ria usually burns them”
You’re absolutely not alone. Even at about the age of 15 Sybil, ahem, awoke something in the adolescent me. She did have quite a wiggle…sorry, I’ll stop there.
Basil: [to himself] Ah, that’s true. That was a warning all right, I guess? Should have spotted that, shouldn’t I? Zhoom! What was that? That was your life, Mate! Oh, that was quick. Do I get another? Sorry, Mate. That’s your lot.
I don’t think anyone really reads my longwinded opening monologues. I should learn to keep it short and simple.
My apologies, Sal.
I should’ve read your most excellent opening monologue.
“Why don’t you have another vat of wine, dear?”
Haven’t watched FT in ages but watched them a lot back in the 80s (my mum had them on video). I think, for me, it’s just edged out by Porridge which I can watch whenever it’s on.
When you first watch Fawlty Towers, you are caught up in Basil’s panic and the moments of physical comedy are the things that stick initially.:
– The nazi walk in the Germans
– The bizarre headless frog-hopping manoeuvre
– Searching for the duck
Just noticed that FT: The Play is on UK Gold this weekend.
Remember it got pretty good reviews. Anyone here see it?
Saw it on telly last night.
A mash up of 3 episodes presented in stage farce stylee.
All the lines you want are there, well performed.
Worth a watch.
Ta!
Will give it a go
Mrs Richards’ hearing aids and pretending to be talking til she cranked them up to eleven then speaking loudly.
Fawlty Towers is, indeed, a classic British sitcom – wonderfully acted, endlessly quotable, and fifty years old. You’d think the writers would have come up with something else in the interim.*
*Series 2 and Wanda notwithstanding.
JC’s comic sensibilities seem to have fallen off a cliff when he discovered and began relying on focus groups around the time of Fierce Creatures
I think Connie Booth is the one who made it good. Similar to Lise Mayer with the Young Ones. Take that ingredient away and the writer(s) can’t quite match it.
One of favourite lines has always been from the episode where Sybil goes into hospital to have an op on one of her toes.
“Ingrowing toenail – you’ll find it on the end of the leg”…
And then the final scene “quite painful”
*claps hands gleefully*
Still macheteing its way through the nerves
I can never fully understand why the car thrashing scene is so highly thought of and is the bit most people associate with the show. For me it’s the one moment of the entire 2 series where Basil goes just a tiny notch TOO over the top and it just seems, well, a bit silly, stretching credibility just a bit too far. Much funnier is the bit just beforehand where he tells the car he’s going to count to 3, and doesn’t even turn the ignition key…but then I guess that’s a tad “silly” as well!
It’s these Fawlty meltdowns that turned some people off the show, like my father. A bit of Python leaking in where it’s not wanted or needed. I tend to agree but there’s much else to love and admire. Best is the characterisation and dialogue and intricate plotting that inevitably leads worstward to lines like ‘I think he’s got some of it in his hair’. Cleese’s most famous scenes are a bit overrated, like Gervais dance in The Office or Delboy falling through the bar. Those things are really not what’s best. FT is still the GOAT of UK sitcom in my view.
Yes! The Gervais dance in itself isn’t really what’s funny, although it’s pretty amusing on first watch. It’s the reactions of all the onlookers. Delboy’s fall is OK, but hardly bears such repeated viewing. Same of the types who think Life of Brian’s “he’s not the messiah, he’s a very naughty boy” is the best bit of that film. Erm…yeah it’s alright but it’s not up there with some of the much more clever dialogue.
My favourite bits in The Office:
1. Keith’s appraisal
2. The moment when, after his motivational talk, the female organiser walks into the dressing room and Brent immediately sucks his stomach in.
Whassiface Holmes’s (Gareth Meringi’s Darkplace) as the IT guy from hell boasting about his gokarting expertise and explaining his theories about Bruce Lee
That IT guy is an absolute treat. At around the same time, we had someone very similar at our place. His appearance was similar to the Comic Book Guy in the Simpsons.
Madonna had announced shows in NZ and there was a group discussion about whether any of us would go along. IT guy casually dropped in that he was a friend of hers from when she toured in the 80s. To prove it, he referred to her as Madge. He won’t need to buy a ticket because him and Madge go way back and they’ll probably catch up.
IT guys sail very close to their stereotypes. Some time ago I had taken my laptop in to the IT department to sort out something or other, and sat for a while next to the young, obese, neck-bearded, malodorous, junk-food popping support guy (Jared, from memory). Bored, I noticed an insignia of some sort on the wall next to his desk and idly asked what it was from. “It’s my World of Warcraft guild”, he replied. “I’m the head of our guild.” I mustn’t have looked impressed enough, because he locked eyes with me and said “In Warcraft, I’m considered a very powerful and important man”. We sat in complete silence for the next half hour.
Some interesting comments on Fawlty Towers on this thread…
A year and a half ago and I’ve forgotten all the comments I made on that thread. Frightening, though some of them are quite funny in rereading (which is probably about as socially acceptable as enjoying the smell of your own farts)
Better than enjoying the smell of someone else’s farts.
Times were tough, we had to make our own entertainment…
Top drawer monthly music and culture magazines modelled on New Yorker just weren’t around any more…
The joys of laying in the bath filling a graduated cylinder [plastic] with water upending it over the anal orifice giving a bottom burp into the cylinder and by displacing the water therein seeing how much of the gaseous grunt had been emitted.
That’s how to make your own entertainment.
It’s undeniably brilliant, and I still quote bits of it regularly. But as a whole, I don’t like it – I might even hate it. I watch a whole episode now, and it makes me feel under stress and I don’t enjoy that feeling at all. I have a similar feeling for Blackadder, except for the second series which was more like alternative comedy. When you get into that clever-clever dialog in the third series, I just can’t get along with it, and just cringe the whole way through.
Yet, small parts of these things are still hilarious to me. I can’t explain.
I catch myself saying “don’t mention the war” often. Not sure if any of the 12 year olds* occasionally in my orbit actually get the reference, but it’s so ingrained in my vocabulary I can’t help trotting it out
*Clever reference there to Ed Reardon’s Week which, speaking of classic British Comedy, is about the best thing on radio since the Goon Show
@Mousey
Comedy Chronicles is another fantastic resource for those of us with
Long memories. Interesting in depth articles go up every fortnight
Recent examples include the rise and fall of Max Wall
https://www.comedy.co.uk/features/comedy_chronicles/setbacks-fightbacks-1-max-wall/
@Jaygee
Thank you!
Just a reminder that lotsa radio comedy (among lotsa other radio broadcasts young and old) can be found at
https://fourble.co.uk/podcasts
Fawlty viewing Polly’s painting: ‘Very modern..very socialist”
Thank you for all your posts – it’s been great to read them all, and enjoy your memories of the show.