Surely everyone has heard of Fawlty Towers? This is arguably the best British sitcom out there and starred John Cleese as Basil Fawlty as well as Prunella Scales as Sybil Fawlty and of course the brilliant Andrew Sachs as Manuel! The real question to ask is why on earth did Cleese and his then wife Connie Booth (Polly) decide to have the programme set in Torquay?

 

Experience

With programmes like this one you will find that people base things a lot on the experiences that they have had and this one is no different. In fact Cleese based his own character on a hotel owner that he had spotted when staying in a hotel on Torquay when filming with the people from the Monty Python team.

 

In May 1970 the team booked to stay in the Gleneagles hotel and when filming on location Cleese became interested in the Hotel owner and the behaviour he had towards his guests. John Cleese actually quotes much later on as “the most marvellously rude man I’ve ever met”. One of the things Cleese saw was the owner throwing a timetable at a guest asking about bus times and another was him taking Eric Idles briefcase out into the garden because he though a bomb was in it. (There was a ticking alarm clock in it). After the rest of the cast left the hotel Cleese and Booth stayed behind at the hotel to research the hotel manager further and it was this that Basil Fawlty was born from.

 

In the end there is no way that you are going to be visiting a hotel like this when it comes to Torquay, in fact they have some fantastic hotels there nowadays. It is worth thinking about one of those spa breaks or family holidays when it comes to this as it is something that people enjoy. Is it too early to think about Christmas hotels Torquay?

 

Have a great time when you are there!