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Reuters<\/p>\nReuters<\/p>\n
John Cleese said The Kipper and the Corpse, which included the Welsh couple Mr and Mrs White, was his favourite Fawlty Towers episode<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
Cleese laughed recalling the scene.<\/p>\n
“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<\/a>.<\/p>\n Cleese also said director John Howard Davies, who was born in London to Welsh parents, was “enormously important” to the show’s success.<\/p>\n Davies, who had previously directed the first six episodes of Monty Python, also directed the first series of Fawlty Towers.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Cleese said that it was Davies’ involvement that led to the casting of Prunella Scales as Basil’s long-suffering and domineering wife Sybil. <\/p>\n Davies was a child actor, starring in David Lean’s Oliver Twist in 1948, an experience Cleese believed helped him develop his casting skills. <\/p>\n “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.<\/p>\n “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.”<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n “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.”<\/p>\n The first episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus aired in October 1969<\/p>\n![\"Reuters](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/b625da30-c16f-11f0-a388-eda4b11262c1.jpg.webp.webp\")
Reuters<\/p>\n