Your chance to stay at Fawlty Towers
June 9, 2011 Leave a comment
"Fawlty Towers" was a brilliant situation comedy that had only a single season series on BBC back in 1975. It’s now been repeated most years by our local NPR television station during their fund raising campaigns.
Written by John Cleese and his then-wife Connie Booth, it was loosely based on the experience ‘enjoyed’ by the Monty Python troupe at the Gleneagles Hotel in the eastern English resort of Torquay.
‘Enjoyed’ is a bit of a overstatement; suffice to say, the cast found themselves at the hands of one Donald Sinclair, who made quite an impression on Mr Cleese:
Cleese called hotelier Donald Sinclair "the most wonderfully rude man I have ever met" after they were berated for their table manners and had a timetable thrown at them when they asked the time of the next bus to town.
If you’re a fan, that sounds very, very familiar. Like a particular Basil Fawlty, played by John Cleese.
I told you that story to tell you this one: the Gleneagles Hotel was to be plowed under to make way for luxury apartments on the site, but the Torquay Council refused the zoning permissions and have instead transformed the site into a 41-room hotel.
Visitors to the hotel pose for pictures before a poster in the lobby. Want yours taken there? I sure do.
Original Post: September 30, 2006
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