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Monday 1 December 2008

Fawlty Towers

Perfecting the art of rudeness

Roger Lewis

It’s a particularly British conundrum, which has to do with our old friend class and its comic counterpart, embarrassment or loss of face. In drama it would derive from Malvolio, the steward who affronts Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek by overstepping the mark (‘Go, sir, rub your chain with crumbs,’ they tell him snobbishly); and other recent status-seeking, thwarted romantics, whom we encounter before they give up and become bitter and mean-spirited, would include Sellers’s Fred Kite, Tony Hancock, Harold Steptoe, Captain Mainwaring, Alan Partridge, Ricky Gervais’s creations — and, of course, Basil Fawlty, with (as Graham McCann puts it) his ‘clenched fists, clenched hair and clenched heart’.

He was based on Donald William Sinclair, the proprietor of the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay. A former Commander in the British Navy who’d been torpedoed three times, Sinclair was always ‘behind schedule, highly stressed and extremely irascible’. He’d be furious if a teapot meant for four was placed on a table for two. He marched about in his dressing-gown berating guests for wanting hot water to heat a baby’s bottle, early alarm calls, late suppers, or if they requested a taxi. ‘Why?’ he’d howl incredulously, taking a step back, his jaw dropping. If you went out late he might yell after you, ‘And where do you think you’re going?’ The most mild-mannered of customers would be informed, ‘We do ask our guests to be prompt for meals.’ Pre-ordered choices in the restaurant would seldom be available. Exasperated people who left early would be sent a court summons for the full cost of their bookings. Sometimes, however, Sinclair went even too far for his formidable wife Betty, so she used to lock him in a cupboard. ‘If Donald starts knocking, girls,’ she instructed the chambermaids, ‘don’t let him out.’

John Cleese, only 35 at the time and resembling ‘a professional pall-bearer hooked on embalming fluid’, barely needed to invent, as Sinclair had already perfected the art of rudeness (‘We’re not full. Of course we’re not full!’). He had stayed at the Gleneagles in May 1970 when on location with the Pythons — Torquay and its environs were used as the background for sketches about Long John Silver impersonators, General Election results for the Silly Party, and the Scott of the Sahara epic (‘as made by the team that brought you Lawrence of Glamorgan’). Sinclair thought Eric Idle’s briefcase contained a bomb, so carried it into the street. He told Terry Gilliam off for holding his cutlery incorrectly. He knocked on Michael Palin’s door, held up the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign and asked, ‘Is this meant to be here?’

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