If you haven’t seen Fawlty Towers, the BBC-produced sitcom, don’t even bother, you monkey-brained twit.  You probably wouldn’t understand it, seeing as it was written for people with an intellect equal to or greater than that of a 6-year-old child.  No, you probably would find the show, written by Connie Booth and John Cleese, quite dull, as there are no gratuitous explosions or women baring their chests.  Instead, the show follows an extremely clever, handsome, and hard-working intellectual and hotelier called Basil Fawlty”(me) as I struggle to imbue my seaside hotel, Fawlty Towers, with a teensy speck of respectability and class, but for some reason that is too much to ask, (ahem) Sybil. 

Sybil (Prunella Scales), my wife, occasionally ceases gossiping over the telephone long enough to smile at the “riff-raff” that pass through our hotel, while I struggle night and day in the trenches.  But no, Sybil, don’t get up!  Attend to your social life, my “little nest of vipers,” that is, after all, what’s important, much more so than our livelihood.

I am also routinely distracted by the incompetent and eternally confused Spanish porter (Andrew Sachs).  He speaks virtually no English.  It’s not as if I speak no Spanish, but his dialect is absolutely horrid.  Really, with all the explaining and repeating and raising my voice to get him to understand, I’d be better off had I hired a monkey.  After all, what can we do?  He is from Barcelona.  The head-in-the-clouds artist/waitress (Booth) drives me less crazy than the other two staff members, but she needs to get a proper head on her shoulders and chuck the artsy-fartsy nonsense and focus on a finding a nice husband, if you ask me.  Most often though, my troubles arise from our inconsiderate and incapable guests.  No better than children, they are.  Though many would say that the guests of Fawlty Towers are not unreasonable in their various requests.  For example, that a meat dish be served cooked and not raw, that the drinks that were ordered be actually served, that there be salt in the salt shaker and not sugar, that they not be verbally or physically abused by the owner, etcetera, etcetera.  Reasonable, some would say, yet I know that they simply have no respect for the inner workings of the service industry, and they ought to be grateful that they don’t live in a more Darwinian society that doesn’t encourage and cater to the vacuous and weak.  I simply want to add a touch of class to my establishment, but it seems that everyone around me is somehow happy with their pathetic lot. 

It is worth noting that I, Basil Fawlty, am based on a real gentleman, one Donald Sinclair, proprietor of the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay England (the same town in which Fawlty Towers is set).  It happened one day in 1970 that a group of comedians known as Monty Python, a crude and desperately unfunny rabble stayed at the Gleneagles while they filmed the steaming pile of baboon dung they call a TV show.  Well, it so happened that this pack of animals were none too happy with Mr. Sinclair’s attitude and tone.  John Cleese is quoted as saying that Donald Sinclair was “the most marvelously rude man I’ve ever met.”  Though I was not able to find what Sinclair had to say about Cleese (another gaping hole in the journalistic “integrity” of the liberal media), I’m sure it would be less flattering, more elegant, and something to do with Cleese being a lanky buffoon with thinning hair and a brain to match!  a-HA!  What say you now, you ignorant jackal?!  Witnesses against Sinclair report that he chucked a bus schedule at a guest who had the audacity to ask about the next bus into town. (Apparently, the aforementioned guest was either too weak or stupid to take the initiative and find out himself.)  Sinclair also openly criticized American Terry Gilliam’s table manners (likely completely justified, considering the festering pits of snot Gilliam passes as films and thrusts onto the public).  Lastly, when there came a suspicious “tick-tick-tick” issuing from a suitcase belonging to Eric Idle, a member of Monty Python and an absolute germ of a man, Idle claimed it was just an alarm clock; however, Mr. Sinclair swiftly and with the safety of the entire hotel in mind decided there was no way to know that it wasn’t a bomb and launched it into the courtyard.  Cleese, along with then wife Connie Booth holding fast to his coattails, decided to stay on at the hotel after the filming was completed to study Mr. Sinclair and, ultimately, make a TV show based on him. 

This brings us (assuming you haven’t yet swallowed your tongue or become distracted by some shiny object) back to the TV show, that Cleese and Booth penned and (Surprise!) starred in.  The show lasted only two series, or “seasons” if you’re an ignorant American (redundant?) which aired four years apart.  Supposedly, the writing duo were “perfectionists” (too bad they couldn’t achieve it) and took up to four months to write a single episode. It is also worth noting that John Cleese and Connie Booth were married when the first series aired, but by 1979 when the second and last 6-episode series aired, they were rather split up, possibly explaining the four-year break between series.  I’m not sure why the relationship ended after 10 years of marriage, but I dare say it’s hardly any of your business, so if you don’t mind I’ll get back to the matter at hand.  Oh!  You are SO gracious!!!   Where was I?  Oh, yes, the show itself is quite depressing, what with me being subjected to an unending barrage of neediness, stupidity, laziness, physical assault from doors, walls, frying pans, fire extinguishers, stuffed moose heads, et al.  Obviously and completely justifiably, my patience quickly erodes and each episode builds to a crescendo of anger, frustration, and riotous comedy, if you like watching poor, hard working chaps get pushed to the breaking point.  You probably do, don’t you, sadistic little brute.  Well, fine, go on then watch it, why not? It’s streaming live on the Netflix, I’m told.  Watch it and I hope you die laughing, little git.

Sources:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fawlty_Towers
2. http://www.fawltysite.net/
3. http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/fawltytowers/index.shtml