Basil Fawlty is the main character of the 1970s British sitcom Fawlty Towers, played by John Cleese. The proprietor of the hotel Fawlty Towers, he is a cynical and misanthropicsnob, desperate to attract hotel guests from the British upper class. His inept attempts to run an efficient hotel, however, usually end in farce. Possessing a dry, sarcastic wit, Basil has become an iconic British comedy character who remains widely known to the public despite only 12 half-hour episodes ever having been made.
Fawlty Towers was inspired by the Monty Python group's stay at the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay. Cleese and Booth stayed on at the hotel after filming for the Python show had finished. The owner, former Royal NavyLieutenant CommanderDonald Sinclair,[6] was very rude to the guests and had an explosive temper, once throwing a bus timetable at a guest who asked when the next bus to town would arrive and placing Eric Idle's suitcase, which contained a ticking alarm clock, behind a wall in the garden in the fear it contained a bomb.
He also denounced Minneapolis-born Monty Python group member Terry Gilliam's table manners as too American (Gilliam had his fork in what Sinclair considered to be the wrong hand while eating). Cleese used the name "Donald Sinclair" for his character in the 2001 film Rat Race. In the episode "The Builders", Fawlty refers to a local hotel or restaurant called "Gleneagles" while talking to Miss Gatsby and Miss Tibbs. Cleese once lived in London's Basil Street.
Personality
Basil, who runs the titular hotel in Torquay, is a misanthropic, lazy, and egotistical snob. In the episode "Communication Problems," Spanish hotel waiter Manuel said Basil is from Swanage, although Manuel is prone to making mistakes. Basil is alleged to have served in the British Army. He once claims: "I fought in the Korean War, you know. I killed four men" to which his wife sarcastically replies, "He was in the Catering Corps; he used to poison them". He often wears military ties, and sports a military-type moustache. He also claims to have sustained a shrapnel injury to his leg, which has a tendency to flare up at convenient moments – usually when Sybil asks him an awkward question.
Basil mainly aspires to attract "respectable" hotel guests from titled members of the British upper class and invariably refers to his overwhelmingly working class-accented guests as "plebs" and "riff-raff". By contrast, Basil's wife Sybil often has to deal with the fallout of his horrible behaviour, with varying degrees of success. Basil is generally desperate to avoid his wife's wrath, and his plans often conflict with hers, but he mostly fails to stand up to her. She is often verbally abusive towards him (describing him as "an ageing, brilliantinedstick insect") and though he is much taller than Sybil, he often finds himself on the receiving end of her temper, expressed both verbally and physically.[7]
Basil has been married to Sybil since the 1960s, although Sybil once sarcastically stated that they have been married since 1485. They very rarely show any signs of affection towards one another (in "The Wedding Party" they are shown to sleep in separate beds); in "A Touch of Class", Basil kisses Sybil but she tells him not to, and in "Gourmet Night" Sybil shows affection towards Basil while she is drunk, to which he responds telling her to "drink another vat of wine". "The Anniversary" is one of the few episodes in which Basil tries to be nice to Sybil, who misreads the situation and believes he has forgotten their anniversary.
Basil does occasionally manage to gain the upper hand. In "The Kipper and the Corpse", Sybil refuses to help Basil dispose of the body of recently deceased guest Mr. Leeman. Basil gets his revenge towards the end of the episode, when he asks a number of disgruntled guests to direct their complaints towards Sybil. In "The Psychiatrist", he has an argument with Sybil during which Basil calls his wife a "rancorous, coiffured old sow". He often addresses her (in a faux-romantic way) with insults such as "my little nest of vipers".[8] Cleese has made the point that, on account of Basil's inner need to conflict with his wife's wishes, "Basil couldn't be Basil if he didn't have Sybil".
Cleese has also described Fawlty as "buried in the past",[9][10][11] as he utterly despises living in the England of the 1970s and instead pines for the "good old days" when the British Empire still existed. Basil also often mentions British military history, but never battles in which the British armed forces were anything other than victorious.
Austin 1100 Mk.I Countryman. A red version was immortalised in the Fawlty Towers episode "Gourmet Night". When the car breaks down and won't start, Basil gets out and tells it, "I'm going to give you a damn good thrashing", before he starts beating it with a branch.
Basil takes many of his frustrations out on the hapless waiter Manuel, physically abusing and bullying him in a variety of ways. The relationship between Basil Fawlty and Manuel has been the subject of academic discourse.[12] On occasions he also assaults others, such as choking a guest in "The Hotel Inspectors", kneeing Major Gowen in "Basil the Rat", "accidentally" elbowing a young boy in the head in "Gourmet Night" and, in the same episode, famously beating his "vicious bastard" of a car with a tree branch when it breaks down.[7]
Another eccentricity affecting Basil is that of occasionally swapping words around in a sentence while propounding a falsehood, for instance in "The Anniversary" when he announces to the party guests that it's "perfectly Sybil! Simple's not well. She's lost her throat and her voice hurts", and – less obviously – reassuring himself as much as his wife in "The Wedding Party" that the sound of knocking on his bedroom door was "probably some key who forgot the guest for their door". He also has difficulty disconnecting his thought-process from unrelated events, as in "The Wedding Party", when he is looking through Polly's sketchbook of life-drawing pictures and answers the telephone with, "Hello, Fawlty Titties?" or in "The Psychiatrist", where, after inadvertently staining a female guest with paint, he realises that Sybil has noticed, and in panic puts his hands on the guest's breasts as a means of stopping her from seeing it.
His desire to elevate his class status is exemplified in the unusual care and respect he affords upper class guests, such as Lord Melbury (who turned out to be a con man and an impostor), Mrs Peignoir (a wealthy French antique dealer) and Major Gowen, an elderly ex-soldier and recurring character – although Basil is sometimes scathing towards him, frequently alluding to his senility and his frequenting of the hotel bar ("drunken old sod"). He has particular respect for doctors, having once aspired to be one himself, and shows a reverential attitude to Dr. Abbott in "The Psychiatrist" (until he learns that Dr Abbott is a psychiatrist), and Dr Price in "The Kipper and the Corpse" (until Dr Price begins to ask awkward questions about the death of Mr. Leeman, and inconveniently requests sausages for breakfast).
Basil is constantly spiteful and abusive to guests, and liable to pick up a tail-end of a situation (often panicking when things go wrong) and turn it into a farcical misunderstanding. Basil is known for his tight-fisted attitude to the hotel's expenses, employing completely incompetent builder O'Reilly in "The Builders" simply because he was cheap. Notoriously, he also becomes indignant whenever a guest makes a request, even if the request is quite reasonable. In "The Kipper and the Corpse", he is offended when a sickly guest politely asks for breakfast in bed, and Basil responds by sarcastically asking him which type of wood he would like his breakfast tray made out of.
Reprisals
John Cleese portrayed Basil in a 1980 special of the British rock band, Queen. Basil is seen at a bar and is asked what he thinks of Queen, to which he shows disgust and calls the music "rock rubbish." He asks, "What do you need that for when you got Beethoven?" [13]
Cleese appeared as Basil in a 2016 TV advertisement for Specsavers during which, in a reference to the Fawlty Towers episode "Gourmet Night" where the character thrashes his car with a branch, Basil accidentally attacks an adjacent police car, mistaking it for his own.[16]
In February 2023 a revival of Fawlty Towers was announced with Cleese reprising the role as an older Basil still running the hotel whilst trying to fit into the modern world.
Cultural references
In the British fantasy series Redwall, an extremely sarcastic and imprudent anthropomorphichare, "Basil Stag Hare", makes an appearance. Author Brian Jacques claims to have based his name and character on Basil Fawlty.
In the 2004 film Shrek 2, John Cleese's character of King Harold references the character by using Fawlty's excuse of "war wound shrapnel" with "Just the old Crusade wound playing up a bit".
In the 2016 movie Deadpool, one of the scenes sees the titular character (played by Ryan Reynolds) asking Ajax (played by Ed Skrein) what his name is, he asks many names and one of them is Basil Fawlty.
In the comedy-dramaanthology series The White Lotus, resort manager Armand (played by Murray Bartlett) bears a strong physical resemblance to Basil Fawlty. Like Basil he frequently displays erratic and sarcastic behaviour and is highly antagonistic towards certain guests.
Adaptations
When Fawlty Towers was remade for Americantelevision, the character of Basil Fawlty was also remade. In the 1978 remake Snavely, Basil's character is recreated as loud-mouthed Henry Snavely. In Amanda's, the character was recreated somewhat as the rude Amanda Cartwright, and in Payne, the character appeared as meddlesome Royal Payne.
In Hotel de Botel (the Dutch adaptation of Fawlty Towers), the Basil character was called Koos Overwater and was played by Dutch comedian and actor Andre van Duin.
Related Research Articles
Fawlty Towers is a British television sitcom written by John Cleese and Connie Booth, originally broadcast on BBC Two in 1975 and 1979. Two series of six episodes each were made. The show was ranked first on a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes drawn up by the British Film Institute in 2000 and, in 2019, it was named the greatest ever British TV sitcom by a panel of comedy experts compiled by the Radio Times.
John Marwood Cleese is an English actor, comedian, screenwriter, producer, and presenter. Emerging from the Cambridge Footlights in the 1960s, he first achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and performer on The Frost Report. In the late 1960s, he cofounded Monty Python, the comedy troupe responsible for the sketch show Monty Python's Flying Circus. Along with his Python costars Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, and Graham Chapman, Cleese starred in Monty Python films, which include Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Life of Brian (1979), and The Meaning of Life (1983).
Monty Python were a British comedy troupe formed in 1969 consisting of Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin. The group came to prominence for the sketch comedy series Monty Python's Flying Circus, which aired on the BBC from 1969 to 1974. Their work then developed into a larger collection that included live shows, films, albums, books, and musicals; their influence on comedy has been compared to the Beatles' influence on music. Their sketch show has been called "an important moment in the evolution of television comedy".
I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again was a BBC radio comedy programme that was developed from the 1964 Cambridge University Footlights revue, Cambridge Circus., as a scripted sketch show. It had a devoted youth following, with the live tapings enjoying very lively audiences, particularly when familiar themes and characters were repeated; a tradition that continued into the spinoff show I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.
Prunella Margaret Rumney West Scales is a retired English actor. She portrayed Sybil Fawlty, the bossy wife of Basil Fawlty, in the BBC comedy Fawlty Towers, Queen Elizabeth II in A Question of Attribution by Alan Bennett and appeared in the documentary series Great Canal Journeys (2014–2021), travelling on canal barges and narrowboats with her husband, fellow actor Timothy West.
Connie Booth is an American actress and writer. She has appeared in several British television programmes and films, including her role as Polly Sherman on BBC Two's Fawlty Towers, which she co-wrote with her then-husband John Cleese. In 1995 she quit acting and worked as a psychotherapist until her retirement.
"The Ministry of Silly Walks" is a sketch from the Monty Python comedy troupe's television show Monty Python's Flying Circus, series 2, episode 1, which is entitled "Face the Press". The episode first aired on 15 September 1970. A shortened version of the sketch was performed for Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl.
"The Germans" is the sixth episode of the BBC sitcom Fawlty Towers. In the episode, while suffering the effects of a concussion, Basil Fawlty waits on a party of hotel guests from West Germany. Despite warning his staff "They're Germans! Don't mention the war", he keeps obliviously ignoring his own advice. His barrage of anti-German sentiment culminates in a goose-stepping impersonation of Adolf Hitler. The Germans are first deeply hurt, but are ultimately left wondering aloud how such idiots as Basil Fawlty and Major Gowen could ever have beaten their ancestors in two World Wars.
Payne is a 1999 American sitcom adapted from the 1970s British television comedy Fawlty Towers. This adaptation, which was a mid-season replacement on CBS, originally aired from March 15 to May 4, 1999. It costars John Larroquette, who was also an executive producer for the series, and JoBeth Williams. Featured too as regular supporting characters are Julie Benz and Rick Batalla. Despite receiving the blessing of John Cleese, who reportedly agreed to be an "irregular cast member" and perform in a recurring role as a rival hotelier if Payne were renewed, the series was cancelled following the broadcast of its eighth episode. A total of nine episodes were filmed, but one was not aired as part of the series' original presentation on CBS.
Sybil Fawlty is a fictional character from the BBC sitcom Fawlty Towers. She is played by Prunella Scales. She is listed as 34 years old as seen on her medical chart in the 1975 episode "The Germans", presumably indicating she was born in 1941. Scales was 43 years old when Fawlty Towers began production.
Manuel is a fictional character from the BBC sitcom Fawlty Towers, played by Andrew Sachs. He reappeared for a small sketch with John Cleese in We Are Most Amused in November 2008.
Donald William Sinclair was the co-proprietor of the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay, Devon, England. He helped manage the hotel after an extensive career as an officer in the Merchant Navy and the Royal Navy. During the Second World War, Sinclair twice survived the sinking of the ships on which he was serving.
"Waldorf Salad" is the third episode of the second series of the BBC sitcom Fawlty Towers. Directed by Bob Spiers, it first aired on 5 March 1979.
Amanda's is an American sitcom television series based on the 1970s British sitcom Fawlty Towers that aired on ABC from February 10 to May 26, 1983. The series starred Bea Arthur as Amanda Cartwright, who owns a seaside hotel called "Amanda's by the Sea" and was Arthur's first return to series television since her sitcom Maude ended in 1978.
Polly Sherman is a fictional character in the BBC sitcom Fawlty Towers. Played by Connie Booth, she is Fawlty Towers' long-suffering waitress and hotel maid.
The Gleneagles Hotel was a hotel in Torquay, Devon, England. The 41-bed establishment, which opened in the 1960s, was the inspiration for Fawlty Towers, a British situation comedy first broadcast in the mid-1970s. John Cleese, and his then wife Connie Booth, were inspired to write the series after they had stayed at the hotel and witnessed the eccentric behaviour of its owner, Donald Sinclair. Later the hotel was managed by Best Western. In February 2015 the hotel closed. It has since been demolished and replaced by retirement apartments.
"Don't Mention the World Cup", also titled "Don't Mention the War", is a 2006 song written by Dean Whitbread and Ashley Slater and performed by The First Eleven with John Cleese. Released to coincide with the 2006 FIFA World Cup, it was intended to dissuade supporters of the England national football team from referring to the Second World War while in Germany for the tournament.
Fawlty Towers: The Play is a comedy play by John Cleese based on his TV sitcom of the same name.
↑ Greenall, Annjo K. (March 2009). "Gricean theory and linguicism: Infringements and physical violence in the relationship between Manuel and Basil Fawlty". Journal of Pragmatics. 41 (3): 470–483. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2008.05.017.
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