Reuters
John Cleese said The Kipper and the Corpse, which included the Welsh couple Mr and Mrs White, was his favourite Fawlty Towers episode
Actor John Cleese – who played the sarcastic, ill-tempered hotel owner in the Fawlty Towers sitcom – has said nobody noticed the “terrible, terrible joke” he wrote in reference to Wales in one of the episodes.
It has been 50 years since Basil Fawlty burst onto our screens, in what became one of the most beloved comedies in British TV history – despite only running for 12 episodes.
Cleese, 86, not only starred in the sitcom, he also co-created and co-wrote it with his then wife, Connie Booth. She went on to play the hotel’s chambermaid, Polly.
In what Cleese said was his favourite episode, The Kipper and the Corpse, Basil tries to prevent Mrs and Mrs White, a Welsh couple, from seeing the body of a dead guest he has hidden in their wardrobe.
Cleese laughed recalling the scene.
“Mr and Mrs White, they were terrific, and then we had that little joke in there about a Welsh restaurant called ‘Leek House.’ A terrible, terrible joke that nobody noticed,” he told Lucy Owen on BBC Radio Wales.
Cleese also said director John Howard Davies, who was born in London to Welsh parents, was “enormously important” to the show’s success.
Davies, who had previously directed the first six episodes of Monty Python, also directed the first series of Fawlty Towers.
Davies was passionate about his Welsh heritage and went on to represent Wales in 1995 at the first Commonwealth Shooting Championships in New Delhi, where he claimed a silver medal.
Cleese said that it was Davies’ involvement that led to the casting of Prunella Scales as Basil’s long-suffering and domineering wife Sybil.
Davies was a child actor, starring in David Lean’s Oliver Twist in 1948, an experience Cleese believed helped him develop his casting skills.
“He was a tremendously good judge of an actor. He gave us a lot of the people. He suggested Prue, I didn’t know who was going to play Sybil.
“To have someone pulling these wonderful performers out of a hat, you just can’t state it too highly and he was a very, very nice man.”
Cleese said he had been having a “bit of a Python time” recently, reuniting with Michael Palin and John Gilliam to promote a book about the Welsh Python Terry Jones.
“It’s quite extraordinary how much Terry Jones did. And I always thought he was from Kingston-upon-Thames, but no, no, he spent the early part of his life in Colwyn Bay and absolutely loved it there.”
Reuters
The first episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus aired in October 1969
A statue of Jones as the nude organist from Monty Python’s Flying Circus will be unveiled on the seafront of his home town of Colwyn Bay next year, and Cleese admitted he might struggle to visit it.
“I’m sorry it’s in Colwyn Bay, because I’m not so likely to visit it there,” he said, describing Colwyn Bay as “long way away”.
He joked that the statue should be put in south London, where they used to meet to write Monty Python.
“I think we should put it in the garden there,” he said.