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John Cleese used to enjoy describing the horror of the man who inspired Basil Fawlty.
“I was wonderfully cranky,” he recalled of Donald Sinclair, owner of the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay, Devon, when he and the rest of the Monty Python gang booked to stay there in the early 1970s.
Mr. Sinclair, who apparently believed that guests get in the way of running an efficient hotel, was so terrifying: he snarled at Cleese when he asked him to book a cab for him, threw Eric Idle’s briefcase against a wall because “it might to be a bomb” and berating Terry Gilliam for his American table manners, which the rest of the comedy team walked out on after just one night.
Cleese stayed and the result was the magnificent Fawlty Towers, although at the time of his stay Cleese was at a loss whether to laugh or cry.
Fans of the show faced the same conundrum this week with the news that Cleese plans to resurrect Fawlty Towers some 44 years after its second and final series ended on BBC2 in 1979.
Cleese stayed and the result was the magnificent Fawlty Towers, although at the time of his stay Cleese was at a loss whether to laugh or cry.
He revealed how the new version will take place in a Caribbean hotel and have a diverse cast inspired by The White Lotus, an American television show that follows the exploits of various dysfunctional employees and guests at an exclusive resort.
So what’s the correct response to a comedian many believe hasn’t been funny for at least 30 years trying to resurrect the most beloved sitcom in British television history?
Even Cleese himself admitted four years ago that there was “not much point” in remaking Fawlty Towers, as everyone would say it wasn’t as good as the original.
Cleese, now 83, will write and star in the new show alongside his daughter, Camilla Cleese, a 39-year-old comedian from Los Angeles. The pair will play a recently reunited father and daughter who run a boutique hotel while Basil tries to “navigate the modern world.”
It will not be produced by the BBC, which Cleese has said he will never work with again, but by Hollywood’s Castle Rock Entertainment.
The derision has been intense, a reflection of how many enemies he has made in recent years with his cantankerous and petty attacks on critics, ex-wives, Britain and the world at large.
To some, he’s become Basil Fawlty, pompous, selfish, and permanently angry, just not nearly as funny.
Cleese plans to resurrect Fawlty Towers some 44 years after its second and final series ended on BBC2 in 1979.
To some, Cleese has become Basil Fawlty, pompous, selfish and permanently angry, just not nearly as funny.
As Nick Robinson, presenter of Radio 4’s Today, said this week: ‘He’s going to have to figure out some humor, because he’s been so angry… the last few times we’ve spoken to him on this show.’
He wasn’t the only one who didn’t seem convinced. Spitting Image writer John O’Farrell said that he “could be like a fat Elvis forgetting his words in Las Vegas”.
Controversial comedian Jimmy Carr suggested that the new version, given Cleese’s age, should be set in a retirement home, stating that the old Python was only there for the money. “I think they have to write him a check beforehand and he’ll be fine,” he said. ‘God love him, don’t mess with man’s money.’
Attributing such cynically materialistic motives to a comedy icon who has vowed to take on ‘cancel culture’ in comedy and joke about the un-jokeable will seem terribly unfair to some of Cleese’s die-hard disciples.
Cleese, however, has form here. His previous attempts to “reboot” his back catalog came when he was in need of money, which led him to once notoriously launch his “Alimony Tour” after he was left with a huge bill in settlement with a ex wife.
There is no sign of any problems in his current marriage to Bath-born former model and jewelery designer Jennifer Wade, 32 years his junior, that might have sparked this latest money-making effort.
The couple moved to the Caribbean island of Nevis in 2018 after Cleese complained about how ‘disappointed’ he was with ‘corruption’ in the UK – which was beyond parody, given that Nevis, an island Lonely volcanic fringed by sandy beaches with a population of just 11,000, has been dubbed ‘the world’s most secret tax haven’.
Even Cleese himself admitted four years ago that there was “not much point” in remaking Fawlty Towers, as everyone would say it wasn’t as good as the original.
It’s a place that does its best not to attract attention, and Cleese seems to fit the bill perfectly. He has been mentioned only once by the Nevis media, to report in 2021 that he was starring in a low-budget film, which sank without a trace. Cleese’s recent film career has hardly seen him repeat the screen success of 1980s outings in A Fish Called Wanda and Clockwise. He relies heavily on voice-overs in children’s movies, though he has a role in Hollywood outcast Roman Polanski’s next film, a black comedy starring Mickey Rourke called The Palace.
Cleese married Jennifer Wade in a low-key ceremony in Mustique in 2012. His first marriage, to American Connie Booth in 1968, lasted ten years and produced a daughter, Cynthia. Cleese’s second wife, American actress Barbara Trentham, to whom he was married from 1981 to 1990, had another daughter, Camilla, but that too ended in divorce.
But it was his third marriage to American psychotherapist Alyce Faye Eichelberger, between 1992 and 2008, that hit his wallet the hardest.
He called the £12m settlement he was ordered to pay him “completely ridiculous”, ungentlemanly telling an Australian talk show: “The last time I paid for sex, it cost me $20m”, and took him to embark on his first life. He tours to raise funds.
Cleese, now reportedly worth £8m, has no such concerns with Wade, whom he calls his ‘kindred spirit’. So, without a costly fourth divorce to finance, could her motivation for resurrecting Fawlty Towers simply be a case of wanting to help her daughter, Camilla, in her career?
Camilla’s Twitter feed suggests there’s little light between father and daughter when it comes to contempt for cancel culture and awakening.
“The only thing scarier than World War III,” he said recently, “is that the generation of fighting age thinks using the wrong pronouns is an act of violence.”
However, there was a time when he made his father rip out his hair (which he had left).
Cleese, now 83, will write and star in the new show alongside his daughter, Camilla Cleese, a 39-year-old comedian from Los Angeles (pictured together in 2009).
At the age of 18, Camilla had been on a seven-year downward spiral of drug and alcohol abuse that began when she was 11 years old.
His drug abuse skyrocketed when he went to boarding school in the US and started ‘hanging out with the wrong crowd’.
She obtained two convictions for driving under the influence of alcohol and was admitted to a psychiatric ward after a particularly violent episode in which she ended up in a police cell “getting off the coke, shaking and crying.”
She says that Cleese later cut her off financially and emotionally after his friends convinced him that “tough love” was the only way to keep her alive. But he said that he “had never been more proud of anyone” when he finally got clean.
His irascibility hasn’t abated in recent years, even if the main topic has shifted from ex-wives to the deadening effect of ‘cancel culture’. It is expected that he will continue this theme when he hosts a news program on GB News alongside journalist Andrew Doyle.
So is there an appetite for the world of Basil Fawlty, 40 years on?
Even former Python Eric Idle seems unsure. Interviewed last October and asked about his old mucker’s complaints about cancel culture, Idle said: ‘He is who he is now. What I try to remember are the good times when we were young and fun.
He continued: ‘We are old. We should just stay in bed and watch TV.
Basilio, take note.