The real-life couple who inspired Fawlty Towers: How guesthouse owners Donald Sinclair and his wife were behind the creation of Basil and Sybil Fawlty… and the other hotel staff who inspired waiter Manuel and long-suffering maid Polly

From pretending to be a goose-stepping Nazi in front of German guests, to punching his red Austin car after it wouldn’t start, Basil Fawlty was the most gloriously haphazard hotel owner.

The star of the hit sitcom Fawlty Towers may have seemed like yet another hilarious creation from the mind of John Cleese.

But the character was in fact – as Cleese has previously said – almost entirely based on Donald Sinclair, the owner of the dilapidated Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay in the 1970s.

Cleese was inspired to create Fawlty Towers after he and the other Monty Python stars stayed there in 1970 and discovered its ‘wonderfully rude’ owner and his wife Beatrice – on whom Basil’s wife Sybil was later based.

Fawlty Towers is now back after half a century in the form of a West End play, with Adam Jackson-Smith playing Basil.

Fellow Python Graham Chapman described Sinclair – who seemed to despise his guests – as “completely around the bend, off his sucker, off his tree.”

Other staff from the Gleneagles – which is now closed – inspired more of the show’s characters.

Spanish waiter Pepe became Manuel – who was played by Andrew Sachs – and German-Swiss housekeeper Jetty provided the basis for Polly, played by Cleese’s then wife Connie Booth.

Cleese and the other Pythons checked into the Gleneagles in May 1970 for a three-week stay while filming Monty Python’s Flying Circus in nearby Paignton.

Sinclair, a former merchant navy officer, burned Python Terry Gilliam, an American, for using his knife and fork in what he believed was the wrong way.

He also left Eric Idle’s bag containing his squash equipment near the pool, thinking it could be a bomb.

Most of the Pythons quickly became infuriated by the icy reception they received and so moved to another hotel.

Cleese later described Sinclair as “the most wonderfully rude man I ever met.”

He stayed at the hotel with Booth to gather more material on the Sinclairs.

Mr Sinclair’s daughter, Helen Cooper, previously told the Mail on Sunday that her parents were just as strange as the fictional couple Cleese created.

However, after seeing Fawlty Towers, they were shocked by the way they had been portrayed.

Mrs Cooper said: ‘Mum and Dad were both so ashamed of Fawlty Towers and the way they were portrayed.

‘In some ways it was very unfair, but I see elements of their personalities in both Basil and Sybil.

‘Dad was not fooled and could be prone to the most monumental outbursts. Who does that remind you of?

‘His refuge was his small office just off the reception desk.

‘He sat there happily doing his little bits and pieces, like typing the menus, until Mum burst in and demanded he sort this, that and the other for her.

“She was the real power behind the throne.”

She added: “Dad hated working in the service industry. He had been an officer with his own orderly and was used to being served ready and on foot.

“He hated lying in wait for others. He was torpedoed three times during the war but survived. It made him quite a serious man.”

On another occasion, Sinclair burned a young mother who had pressed the night porter’s button to request a bottle of hot water to warm her baby’s bottle.

The hotel owner showed up in his dressing gown and told her she had gotten him out of bed because of the “trivial” request.

When Cleese asked Sinclair to call him a taxi, his first reaction was shock and said: ‘Excuse me?’

He finally said, “I think so,” and then reluctantly carried out the request.

Sinclair also told a guest drinking an aperitif at the bar: “You better drink up, my wife doesn’t spend her whole life in the kitchen preparing good food only to have it spoil because you can’t get to it on time.’

He also once stopped serving breakfast and began questioning guests when a teapot intended for four was discovered on a table for two people.

Several guests who had asked in the hotel lounge if sandwiches were available were thrown away by the owner when they asked if sandwiches were available.

Cleese’s fellow Python star Graham Chapman later recalled that Sinclair was “way around the bend, off his asshole, off his tree.”

Cleese later explained that Manuel was made a foreigner because of his experience with British restaurants at the time.

He said: ‘If you visited most restaurants in those days – the 1970s – you were very lucky if you got what you ordered, because almost none of the waters could understand or speak English.

“That wasn’t their fault – this is very important – it was the fault of the owners who saved money.”

Other characters in Fawlty Towers included Brian Hall’s Terry, the hotel chef, and guests Major Gowen (Ballard Berkeley) and Miss Tibbs and Miss Gatsby, who were portrayed by Gilly Fowler and Renee Roberts.

Despite its popularity, Fawlty Towers only lasted 12 episodes, appearing in two series in 1975 and 1979.

For the new play, Cleese, now 84, wove together three famous episodes: The Hotel Inspectors, Communication Problems and The Germans.

The latter saw Basil goose-walking through the hotel after a blow to the head and shouting to everyone: ‘Don’t talk about the war!’