Surely everyone has heard of Fawlty Towers? One of the best British sitcoms if not the best starring John Cleese se as the hilarious Basil Fawlty, Prunella Scales as Sybil Fawlty and of course who could forget 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
one of the key reasons that people are great at writing sitcoms like this is because they base things on personal experiences and real people. 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 Ive ever met. Some of the things Cleese is talking about is the owner throwing a timetable at a guest asking about bus times and also taking Eric Idles briefcase out into the garden because he thought it was a bomb. (There was a ticking alarm clock in it). In case you did not realise, this is the real life Basil Fawlty and after the pythons left Cleese and Booth stayed behind to further research into the character.
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!
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