Original subtitles

MOOING

THEY LAUGH

I couldn't live without comedy.

What is the point if you can't laugh every day,

and hopefully several times a day?

STEVEN BERKOFF: Fawlty Towers is an all-time comedy classic...

When I was growing up, Fawlty Towers was up there.

..keeping the nation in hysterics for 50 years.

Do we think that's classic, Fawlty Towers?

I do, I'm gonna say yes. Yes.

One of the things that makes Fawlty Towers brilliant

is John Cleese. He's the master.

It's a quintessential slice of old world Englishness

at a time of immense change.

The '70s were a funny time.

It was a time where Britain was very much changing.

Immensely, immensely wonderful programme.

A great British farce that was almost canned before it began.

All this terrible feedback came back, and yet it still aired.

That's BBC, isn't it, though?

But it's now more controversial than ever,

with the BBC censoring some scenes.

Racism and sexism, whoo.

It was offensive to everyone.

The bottom line is, it's not acceptable.

So, is it still funny?

We can't say anything these days.

Despite all of the head-slapping and goose-stepping.

To try and cut it out and replace it

would just be cutting up a piece of classic comedy history.

We've assembled a group of baby boomers and Gen Zs,

who are joined by an expert panel

to help guide us through this British classic.

They'll be watching it back through the lens of today and yesteryear

to see if there really should be the cancellation of Fawlty Towers.

It's 9pm on Friday, 19th of September, 1975,

and the nation is settling down for the evening.

It's an altogether simpler time.

A time when we would sit down in unison,

turn on the box and soak up what was being served to us.

TV ANNOUNCER: BBC Two, hello again. Good evening to you.

Now time for a new sitcom.

Pack your bags and let's check in to Fawlty Towers.

ENGINE CLICKING

Come on. Come on.

Start!

SHOUTING: Start, you vicious bastard! Come on!

THEY CHUCKLE

That episode became quite famous for his beating the car.

It's quintessentially Basil.

Basil Fawlty is a man at odds with the modern world,

getting very angry at an Austin Countryman

on a rainy street in a country

where the cars never seem to work any more.

ENGINE CLICKING

I'm warning you, if you don't start...!

I'll count to three!

One... two... three! Right! That's it!

I've had enough!

You've tried it on just once too often.

Right! Well, don't say I haven't warned you!

That is a scene that's stuck in my head for decades.

I think the beauty of Basil Fawlty personifying the car.

He basically spoke at it.

He's like, "If you don't start in the next three seconds...

"Right, that's it, that's it."

We've all been there.

I've laid it on the line to you time and time again!

Right! Well, this is it!

I'm gonna give you a damn good thrashing!

THEY CHUCKLE

HE LAUGHS

THEY CHUCKLE

Grrr. And the... "I warned you."

I love this scene. I really do.

This always makes me laugh so much, doesn't it you?

When he thrashes the car, that, to me,

is the apex of Basil Fawlty's character and his comedy.

Do I think we can relate to that?

When we're frustrated, I think probably, yeah.

Maybe not bashing your own car.

That's a bit extreme,

but you just get a bit frustrated and you try to, like, act out.

You can see his frustration just absolutely boils over.

I think he's quite funny.

Like, there's this tall man shouting at his car in the middle of,

like, a rainy British street.

I think that's... Yeah. Who would have thought it?

The Gen Zs actually like it.

But that was something that everybody could enjoy, at any age.

HE LAUGHS

We've given both the Gen Zs and the baby boomers

a service bell to ring their approval,

and a kipper if they think something stinks.

So, what do they think so far?

I would give that a bell.

It's up in the top three, isn't it? I mean, that is right up there.

Definitely. It's so funny.

Oh, that's a bell.

Remarkably, the baby boomers and the Gen Zs

actually see eye-to-eye.

For the baby boomers,

by the mid-1970s,

John Cleese's comedy was a staple in British households.

I look down on him because I am upper class.

I look up to him...

But much like Cleese's class sketch, there can be a big difference

between the baby boomer and the Gen Zs.

I am middle class.

I'm a baby boomer.

I look down on Gen Z and modern society,

and I think everybody is far too sensitive these days.

I'm Gen Z, and I look up at baby boomers

and think they're all stuck in the past.

The past is 50 years ago now, and Britain in 1975

is going through a bit of a rough time.

There were three-day weeks,

collapsing governments, kidnappings and bombings.

Then a vote for stronger ties with Europe meant

more Germans in more British hotels.

There were plenty of people going, "Yes, we are open to this,"

and, "Welcome to our island."

And welcome to Torquay, and a tiny part of little Britain

called Fawlty Towers, a place where nothing has really changed

and where everyone still acts like Britain rules the waves.

The only image I have of Torquay in the '70s is Fawlty Towers.

HE CHUCKLES

I think it's become a pillar for how British society was seen

and satirised back in that period of time.

You've got characters that represent social types.

Joining car thrashing hotelier Basil Fawlty

are a memorable range of eccentrics.

There's a bit where the Major walks past with a gun,

and Fawlty takes a second to clock it.

That's classic slapstick.

A huge amount of the actual laugh is not the thing,

it's the reaction to the thing.

The Major was the voice of old. He was the pre-war voice.

He was the person that would come in and say things

to show that even 1970s Torquay wasn't like that any more.

But did anybody find it weird that the Major seemed to live there?

In the 1970s,

when there wasn't really the same social care that there is now,

a lot of retired people would actually just take to hotels

and live in hotels.

Then there are the staff who conspire against each other.

I've gone blank.

Bird-brain!

No, no, no, that came in third. Er...

Fishwife! What?! No!

Polly gets into a total mess about it,

and they make that into a real dramatic comic episode.

Erm, it's quite wonderful.

Polly is the most sensible character in the hotel.

She's the most capable.

If she was in another comedy,

I think they would have her in a thing with loads of cleavage.

She'd be a dolly bird,

and she'd just be an idiot and all that stuff.

No. She's the smart one. She's the clever one.

Accompanying Polly is the hotel's waiter.

HE CLEARS THROAT

I know nothing.

What?

What? I know nothing.

The physicality of Andrew Sachs is great.

I think his vocal delivery is great.

John Cleese was making a comic point about what was reality in Britain.

There were a lot of people who came to do exactly the work

that Manuel was doing at Fawlty Towers.

And finally, the hoteliers themselves.

Firstly, Basil's wife, Sybil.

Would you like to deal with this, Basil?

So you see we couldn't possibly manage it for at least three weeks.

But if you want it done straightaway,

I suggest you try someone like, uh, oh, what's his name?

It's, uh... O'Reilly?

BASIL: 'Bravo, Polly! Well done, girl.

'But listen, where are you speaking from?'

She's in here with me, Basil.

That's very, very good physical comedy.

And also with the character of Sybil,

who you know is eventually going to find out everything,

because it's in the nature of Sybil

that she always does find out about everything.

But the idea that they're getting one over on Sybil is very well done.

And of course, Basil himself.

Thank you, dear. Thank you so much.

Don't know where I'd be without you.

Land of the living, probably.

It really establishes their dynamic between the two of them.

How she's gonna tell him what to do and how to do it.

He's quite a depressed character, really.

He talks about how everything's pointless.

And how, you know, "Do you remember when we had fun?"

It's a satire of an old-fashioned world

in chaos and decline.

The more you understand about history,

the better you are placed

to parody, satirise everything that's happening.

So, what was happening in 1970s Torquay?

There's an origin story here, right?

The radioactive spider bite moment is when they're making Monty Python

and they stay in this hotel in Torquay.

Impressive, Doc.

Never before has Basil Fawlty been compared to Spider-Man.

The establishment in question was the Gleneagles Hotel,

which was ideally located

when Monty Python and the Flying Circus

was filming in nearby Paignton.

Torquay, which was very refined,

you know, very conservative and all of that,

you'd expect to have good service and very polite...

Genteel. "Genteel" is the word.

But not in this hotel.

They get this incredibly rude hotelier.

Who was grumpy and unhelpful and...

obviously such an unpleasant but interesting character.

Mr Grumpy was a former naval officer

and now hotelier called Donald Sinclair.

Most of the Monty Python cast checked out early

to find somewhere with better service,

but not Connie Booth and John Cleese.

They stayed on and started to study him.

So that's where the germ of Basil came from.

Well, I must be punished, then, mustn't I?

You're a naughty boy, Fawlty!

Don't do it again!

What am I gonna do?! She's gonna be back at lunchtime!

He starts hitting himself on the bum,

which, you know, to watch a man, six-foot-five, hitting himself,

particularly in that weird, ill-fitting jacket

that he's wearing at the time,

sort of somehow heightens the comedy of that.

We were staying in this hotel in Torquay,

and this guy behind the desk,

who's now, fortunately, gone to Canada, so...

relieved certain legal problems, fascinated me.

Just because the guests were a nuisance.

And when Connie and I wanted to write something

about five years later, erm, we sat down one morning,

and by about 11:30, we knew we were gonna write about this hotel.

But before they wrote Fawlty Towers, Cleese wrote an episode

of Doctor At Large called No Ill Feeling,

and gave the impatient hotelier character a trial run.

Name? Upton.

George! What?

Yeah, all right. I mean...

Upton, Mr Upton.

Well, Dr Up... It doesn't matter.

Yes, I know!

It's not anything like as good as Fawlty Towers.

I think one of the things is, the character in Doctor At Large

is no Basil, he's just rude.

He's not as lower middle class as Basil.

He's more working class.

He hasn't got the kind of affected accent that Basil has.

So the snobbery that drives a lot of Basil's mania is not there.

But sprinkle a bit more comedy over the rudeness,

add a little snobbery, and of course, John Cleese, and...

Could you put both your names, please?

Well, will you give me a date?

I only use one. You don't have a first name?

No, I am Lord Melbury, so I simply sign Melbury.

Go away.

I'm so sorry to have kept you waiting.

The phone is quite a good comic device in Fawlty Towers,

and it's used really well in this scene.

Fawlty Towers is one of the best,

and it is because everything about it is so intensely comedic.

And he suddenly realises he's talking to aristocracy,

and he's such a snob.

A lot of the humour came from the fact

that Basil kowtows to anyone with status,

and views everyone with regards to their class.

Basil Fawlty is obviously gonna be a sycophant, isn't he,

to anyone who comes in?

And I think that the class structure was even more defined

back in the '70s than it would be now.

He is somebody who's very conscious of his position in the class system.

So anybody who he considers above him, he will fawn over.

Now, is there something, something, anything that I can do for you?

Anything.

Yes. Well, I have filled this in.

Oh, please don't bother with that.

Now, a room! A room, a special room. A single? A double? A suite?

Well, we don't have any suites, but we have some beautiful doubles.

Oh, no, no, no, just a single. Just a single, absolutely!

How very wise, if I may say so, Your Honour.

With a bath? Oh, naturally. Naturally.

Naturellement!

BASIL LAUGHS

I'm not too sure that there are many people

who could deliver lines like Basil Fawlty, like John Cleese.

But Cleese and Booth were about to do the most shocking thing yet.

You would no way be able to air that today.

STEVEN BERKOFF: In the 1970s, Fawlty Towers was a huge hit,

but one episode in particular was the most controversial ever.

It's only a bit of comedy, though.

How bad can it be?

Well, it turns out to be really bad.

Some of the language in the next scene is so offensive,

it's rarely broadcast, given today's standards.

And the strange thing was that throughout the morning,

she kept referring to the Indians as ni...

'I said...

' "BLEEP are the West Indians. These people..." '

I was not expecting that.

' "No, no, no," she said...' ' "No, no, no, no, no," I said.'

That... That was a hard watch. Erm...

The unsayable racial slurs are the "W-word"

and what is often referred to now as the "N-word".

I must have been keen on her because, er,

because I took her to see India!

India? At The Oval.

India? And in fact, it was India playing cricket at The Oval.

None of them really understands

the true meaning of what they're saying.

And that's funny. That's what makes it funny.

"No, no, no, no, no," I said.

"BLEEP are the West Indians. These people are BLEEP."

You would no way be able to air that today.

How uncomfortable was that, watching that?

Well, it was... It...

I was trying to understand why it was funny.

"No, no, no," she said, "All cricketers are BLEEP."

There's a lot of words in there

that nowadays people would go, "Oof."

We were a little bit, I think.

It's quite shocking, to be fair.

For those type of derogatory terms just to be used on TV like that,

it just makes it more acceptable.

It's a bit too much.

In those days, it was funny, and it still is funny to me.

But, erm, you know, it just wouldn't...

People would be reporting it and...

SHE CHUCKLES

I can't say things like that.

I'm gonna give that a kipper.

I would definitely say kipper.

Like, derogatory terms, I just feel like it was not funny at all.

Can I be controversial and just give it the bell?

Because from a comedy perspective, it makes me chuckle.

And for me to say... to give it the kipper,

I think I wouldn't be telling the truth.

The Major's controversial use of the N-word

has divided the generations.

And it also is a reflection of what you could get away with

back during the '70s,

which is a sad indictment of... of media back then as well.

I mean, it was of its time, and I think if somebody

doesn't enjoy watching it, they don't need to watch it.

But how was it ever OK to even say that on British TV?

Well, it almost never made it past the pilot stage.

Connie and John wrote Fawlty Towers together,

which famously took them almost six weeks for each episode

due to them refining the plots and maximising the comedy.

But at the time, not everyone saw the potential.

BBC script editor Ian Main was handed the pilot script,

and promptly sent back a rather scathing response.

I think this is another classic story, really.

Somebody sees the first episode,

it's not what they're expecting, and so they write it off.

They can't see the obvious value in it.

Other comments from execs questioned why it was all set in one place,

and why would he leave Monty Python for this?

I love the fact that all of these terrible things came back.

All this terrible feedback came back, and yet it still aired.

That's BBC, isn't it, though?

And look, 50 years later,

I guarantee, somewhere, they're taking credit for it.

"Yeah, that was... That was my idea. I put that on."

SHE LAUGHS

Nevertheless, on 19th of September, 1975,

Fawlty Towers aired for the first time,

and the laughter began even before the action did

with this iconic theme tune.

MUSIC: 'Fawlty Towers' by Dennis Wilson

ALL: # Da, da, da, da, da, da Da, da, da, da, da, da... #

THEY LAUGH

The very much loved music and the accompanying hotel sign

soon became a talking point.

You used to love those anagrams, didn't you?

I like that, to be fair. I like that. That's...

I think that's, like... I think that's clever, I like that.

And, like, it's something fun every week.

Like, if you're watching the show every Friday night,

you can be like, "Oh, did you spot it?

"Did you see what it was?" I think that's quite fun.

But you always imagine there was some vandal,

or somebody who had a thing against Basil,

coming by the sign every week and changing it.

That kind of feeling to it. Yeah, yes.

Some of those, I remember, like, howling with laughter.

"Flowery twats" is one of the few pure anagrams,

like, every letter used.

It's a perfect anagram.

"Flowery twats", you would never say that in front of your parents.

THEY CHUCKLE

There are one or two which sneak in there

which are quite naughty, actually.

I just feel like that's such, like, a British thing to say.

Like, no-one else really says "twat".

And, I don't know, that just... That tickled me.

People don't realise how obscene the word "twat" is, actually.

It's another word for BLEEP, basically.

Shush. Don't tell the Gen Zs that, Prof,

they're just starting to enjoy it.

A little bit like The Simpsons - every opening is different.

I think they had a different sign for every episode,

which was quite fun.

It has that magical attraction,

and that is what's so great about it.

And that is what made it as famous as it is.

A sitcom lives or dies by how memorable its theme tune is.

And if you can't sing to it, then I'm sorry, it's...

Just cancel the whole show.

The question is, do our discerning viewers agree?

Yeah, I would give the anagrams a bell.

Absolutely a bell for me. What do you think?

Yeah.

Once into the action,

the fast-paced farce is driven by Cleese's character, Basil.

Farce is a theatrical form, originally, and it...

And farces are kind of manic comedies, really,

where there's high stakes.

They're built on tension and things going wrong.

It wasn't just a farce,

cos we'd seen farces before and loved them.

Just so much more than anything we'd seen before.

I think John Cleese is probably one of the funniest people you'd meet.

And the plots often centred round Basil's fear of his wife, Sybil,

and his desire to elevate the standing of the hotel.

You really wonder how, in calmer times,

the relationship between Basil and Sybil could ever work.

He gets the last laugh,

because the idiot that he is landed Sybil.

She's the idiot that married him.

Like, in that regard, he's the genius.

He married a woman that keeps his hotel afloat.

Their encounters had the audience in stitches.

But does the portrayal of Basil and Sybil's relationship

stand the test of time, or is it downright sexist?

Basil? Yes, dear?

Are you going to hang the picture? Yes, I am, dear. Yes. Yes.

When? Well, when I've... When I've...

Well, why don't you do it now?

I'm doing this, dear. I'm doing the menu.

You've got all morning to do the menu.

Why don't you hang the picture now?

I like their dynamic, like, as a couple.

I think that it's believable.

I think that's very realistic of a couple at the time.

Like, I enjoyed that. Yeah.

Well? Yes, all right! I won't do the menu!

You don't realise how long it takes to do the menu, but, no,

I'll hang the picture now.

If the menus are late, it doesn't matter,

the guests can all come and look at the picture until they're ready.

Lower.

Lower.

That's a typical Basil and Sybil exchange, isn't it?

She knows what she wants, and he knows what he wants,

but he always has to give in the most.

That's right. Yeah.

I do wonder, why didn't she...? Why isn't she doing the menu?

What does she do? Like, what does she do?

Maybe she is the smart one for marrying him.

She gets a whole hotel and doesn't do anything...

Oh, I'm gonna have to rewatch it.

The nagging wife routine wasn't just a one-trick pony.

Or should that be a one-trick moose?

Yes, Fawlty Towers. Hello?

I was just doing it, you stupid woman.

I just put it down to come here to be reminded by you

to do what I'm already doing.

What is the point of reminding me to do what I'm already doing?!

I mean, what is the bloody point? I'm doing it, aren't I?!

Because of their dynamic, like,

you can see through their acting that it's, like...

They still love each other. Like, it's... Like, it's banter.

But it's just really giving the idea that the wife is so annoying.

They're trying to normalise this type of relationship.

I just... I don't find the humour in it at all.

But many viewers did find the humour,

and the moose will forever be associated with Fawlty Towers.

Mr Moose is up.

It's done, done, done. It's up.

It's down again.

Did you use a wall plug?

Give it to me. Give it to... Argh!

He went much, much further than he needed to go.

But it showed, you know, how dedicated he was

to making it as realistic as possible.

And at the same time, as comic as possible.

Sybil wouldn't be the sort of person to stay in that relationship

if she didn't love him - she'd just have walked.

She's far too strong a woman,

which was great to have a strong woman like that.

She'd just have walked.

But Sybil wasn't the only female lead.

Connie Booth played aspiring artist and hotel maid Polly.

Polly's a point-of-view character.

She's the most reasonable character in the entire sitcom.

It was very much a comedy cliche

of the straight-laced wife and the bit of fluff.

Women very often were portrayed on television

as a pair of boobs on legs, in a way.

Women weren't exactly divided between those two.

But in very broad terms, they were very recognisable characters.

Polly's character on the whole wasn't sexualised,

apart from perhaps in one scene.

POLLY: I'm sorry, Mr Fawlty.

Look here, Polly. We were just saying goodbye...

What sort of a place do you think this is, a massage parlour?

I mean, we are running a nice, respectable, high...

Sorry, did I say something funny? No, I was just looking for...

No, no, obviously, I said something frightfully comic.

No, it's just the heat.

So long as I amuse the staff. I mean, that's all I'm here for.

That was the only time in the series

that I can remember where you ever saw Polly

with that sort of dress code.

Well done, Nick, you managed to safely navigate that.

Viewing it in the 21st century in the context of today,

there would be people who would find that offensive and think,

"Oh, yes, you know, as a woman, she's being objectified."

But then I think what they're doing is challenging

the societal attitudes that were held towards women,

and the way that women were perceived.

One other thing, Polly.

I'm afraid we've abandoned the idea of the topless afternoon tea.

So if you wouldn't mind changing

before you go in where people may be trying to eat.

I was going to.

There's no objectification of women going on here,

because the whole of Fawlty Towers

is about caricatures and stereotypes.

To be fair, she's putting herself in that situation

to be sexualised while she's doing her job.

PHONE RINGS

Hello, Fawlty Titties.

When he answers the phone and says, "Oh, Fawlty Titties,"

erm, you realise that he, too, has fallen for the whole situation.

And that's the brilliance of the comedy there.

But Basil doesn't just push his staff's buttons.

He's not above grabbing a few things either.

Like in this creepy scene.

Just turn left out of the gate and straight on,

and it's on your right.

You left this downstairs.

I was trying the switch. I'm sorry. Sybil, Sybil, Sybil!

I didn't know she was there. I was trying the switch.

It's choreographed so perfectly.

I mean, it is offensive when you look at it, but in a way,

in those days, it didn't give offence because it was just...

It all flowed and seemed so natural.

I've read about it, Basil. The male menopause, it's called.

Oh, and one word of advice - if you're going to grope a girl,

have the gallantry to stay IN the room with her

while you're doing it.

This is a brilliant line.

"If you're going to grope a girl, at least be in the same room."

That's so, so wonderful.

Those two scenes were absolutely typical.

The hand coming round onto... onto the bosom.

It wasn't as shocking then as it is now.

Our generational viewers will be the judge of that.

Yeah, it's a timid bell, but a bell.

I would say it's a bell cos it's showing typical relationships.

I'll definitely give it a bell.

I thought that was probably the funniest clip so far.

Who was it that said this generation are snowflakes?

Coming up, we'll be taking a closer look at Manuel.

There are elements of the way

that the character of Manuel's handled

that are uncomfortable today.

And why did the BBC cancel one of the episodes?

I don't think it was right then,

it's not right now, and it never will be.

STEVEN BERKOFF: In the 1970s, if you changed the channel,

the chances are it would be to another sitcom,

and they were lapped up by the British audience.

Some of the things like, obviously, Fawlty Towers,

but then we did, like, Till Death Us Do Part and so on.

Did you find that funny? I thought it was... Alf Garnett.

Monty Python's really good, Only Fools And Horses,

but I haven't seen Fawlty Towers. LAUGHTER

Only Fools And Horses was actually 1981,

but that is still over 20 years before these Gen Zs were born.

That makes me feel very old.

I have an old people's bus pass now.

Come on, you don't use the bus, Sir Trevor!

The very first series of Fawlty Towers ran for six episodes,

but that was very nearly the end of it.

For us, it was a release, because somehow I think, too,

in the relationship of Sybil and Basil,

we were able to get out a lot of our frustrations

with each other through those characters,

and, um... it was a terrific time.

It was really good. It was kind of like therapy.

Those frustrations never went away.

In 1978, Booth and Cleese divorced,

and Connie later said marriage counselling was crucial

to them making a second series, which later aired in 1979.

12 perfect episodes, and you can watch them time and time again,

you laugh every time.

You laugh every time at the same place.

One character that brought a lot of those laughs is Manuel.

You see, I speak English well.

I learn it from a book.

ENGLISH ACCENT: Hello. I am English.

Manuel is lovable. He's an adorable character.

When I was watching it as a kid,

I used to absolutely identify with Manuel.

The portrayal of that character by Andrew Sachs was brilliant.

Of course, Manuel wasn't English.

All together now.

He's from Barcelona. From Barcelona.

AS MANUEL: "I am Manuel. I am from Barcelona."

He's hired the cheapest waiter he could get,

somebody from Barcelona.

And Andrew Sachs, the actor,

was neither Spanish nor English-born.

What's interesting about Andrew Sachs

is that he was actually born in Germany,

and he came over right before the war, as a child,

and lived in England.

Sachs later became an actor in London's West End,

but he also appeared in corporate training videos

by a company called Video Arts, owned by John Cleese.

Incredibly, he wasn't being paid enough for Fawlty Towers.

At the time, it wasn't uncommon for the nation's biggest stars

to get paid modest sums.

John Cleese was paid £6,000 in 1975 for 43 weeks' work,

writing and performing in the first series of Fawlty Towers.

That's just over £63,000 in today's money.

Oh, Mike, I've noticed that you are probably

in the early stages of a severe nervous breakdown,

so I suggest a personal crisis meeting this Friday at 4:35,

immediately following the regional sales figures presentation.

How the films work is that you see characters being unreasonable,

so you can sort of see, in a way,

Fawlty is a bit like a twist on that, isn't it?

The fact that Cleese had this company, Video Arts,

where he was bringing actors in to work with him

and play these comedic characters, would have made casting easier.

And I adore people with problems.

In fact, the worse the problem, the more I adore them.

Video Arts was brilliant

because a corporate training video could be as dry as ditchwater.

It must have been very useful for John and Connie

to see this array of actors and to say,

"Well, look. Oh, gosh, she's fantastic,"

or, "He's brilliant," and be able to give work to these budding stars.

I'd been working with John Cleese in the early '70s

on some training films for his company, Video Arts.

And during the making of one of those films,

he brought up this pilot that he'd written for the BBC,

and would I like to play the Spanish waiter?

"I love the idea. Thank you, John.

"But could you make him a German waiter?

"Because I'm not sure I can do a Spanish accent."

And I come from Germany. German's my first language.

John Cleese said, "No, no, it has to be a Spaniard,"

which, again, with the number of digs that he makes

at Manuel being from Barcelona, you go,

"Where did that stereotype...? What stereotype are you playing on?"

Ah, good question, Ria. I'm glad you asked.

Spain experienced a huge wave of emigration in the 1970s,

particularly from Barcelona.

This was in part down to General Franco,

who ruled Spain as a dictator after winning the Spanish Civil War.

I think it's significant because of the increase

in the Spanish population of British Isles at that time.

So I buckled down to it,

mugged up the accent on the way to the studio, as it were,

and we got on with it.

John Cleese might have moaned about £6,000,

but Andrew Sachs only got £350 for all 12 episodes.

"Andrew, this is definitely your role."

He went, "Can we make it German?" They went, "No, it's Spanish."

He goes, "I'm not sure I can do Spanish."

They go, "That's all right. Still your role.

"We're only gonna pay you 350 quid for 12 episodes."

And he still went, "OK."

And for the British audience,

the language barrier made for some highly comedic moments.

LAUGHTER

Throw it away. Que?

Throw it away. Throw it away.

Throw it away!

Now!

Throw it...

English isn't his first language.

That opens up the door to loads of language gags.

Throwing away the grapefruit is brilliant because,

yet again, Basil can't make himself understood.

Manuel really trying, but failing.

And then the actual throw is genius because it's a non-obvious throw.

It's not just down onto the floor. It's not at Basil.

It's just sideways. Sideways!

It's another angle to get a laugh.

You know that "throw it away"?

Bang! Hits that kid on the head.

I do think that situation was funny.

Saying, "Throw it away," and he throws it at the customers.

I've waitressed before.

If someone chucks something at a customer, that's funny.

We're gonna laugh about it, but...

"I know nothing," he said. "I know nothing." Yeah.

Whilst Basil didn't seem to know Spanish,

Cleese and Booth did,

which helped them to write some of the best gags.

BELL DINGS

Manuel. Si, senor?

There is too much butter on those trays.

Que? There is too much butter on those trays.

No. No, no, senor. Not... Not "on those trays".

No, sir. Uno, dos, tres.

It becomes this incredible wordplay.

How they worked that out, I don't know,

but it comes so fast, and so it's pure joy.

What's brilliant about that is, yeah, you need to kind of get

that he's saying "one, two, three" in Spanish

to kind of get the point of that gag.

I mean, I think Cleese and Booth are really, really good

at writing language gags.

So, I think the best example would be Mrs Richards and Manuel.

I specifically asked for a sea view in my written confirmation,

so please make sure I have it.

Que?

What? Que?

K? Si.

C?

KC?

KC? What are you trying to say?

"K?" "Si." "CK?"

"What?" "No, que, 'what'." "CK Watt? Is that the owner?"

You know, that's fantastic writing.

Mrs Richards, fantastic. She was wonderful.

She was just...

She was just fantastic.

No, no, no, no. Que, "what". K Watt?

Si. Que, what.

CK Watt? Yes!

LAUGHTER

Who is CK Watt? Que?

Is it the manager, Mr Watt? Oh, manager!

He is? Ah, Mr Fawlty.

What? Fawlty.

It's clever. Like, the plots are clever,

and the character writing's clever, and the physicality's clever.

The wordplay is also clever.

He's not explaining himself correctly,

and he's misunderstanding what he's saying anyway.

So I think the joke's on both of them, so I'll give it a bell.

BELL DINGS

Yeah, it's a bell. Bell, bell.

Bell for me.

But Basil's frustrations with communicating with Manuel

often led to violence.

This, Basil's wife. This, Basil.

This, smack on head.

It's comedy violence. It's like cartoon violence.

It's like Tom and Jerry. People don't get hurt.

Manuel, let me explain.

Agh!

In Laurel and Hardy, in every episode,

there was that kind of scenario

where there was a slap or a kick... It was classic.

..or a poke in the eye. Yeah.

And it made me laugh, and I viewed that there

no different than Laurel and Hardy. You know they're not actually hurt.

But the joke comes across, his frustration, what he's doing,

but it's slapstick, they're not actually hurt, so it's OK. Yeah.

So, like...

But what will a generation more used to duvet days and working from home

make of this?

And it's just, like, internalising that that kind of violence is OK.

Like, I love a bit of slapstick, but that's just...

That feels really harmful.

Like, I didn't enjoy that. Yeah. Yeah.

It wasn't just the violence Manuel was subjected to.

You want room 16 for him?

Yeah, with a bath, you dago twit.

You mad? You mad? You pay for room first.

There's a lot of use of the word "dago",

which, even in those days, was demeaning.

It's a corruption of the name Diego.

So, it's just the name Diego kind of uttered simply as "dago".

It probably has its highest frequency of usage

in Fawlty Towers, actually.

I don't think many other TV sitcoms actually use the term very much.

I think it's really unfortunate.

And why was Manuel so... well, Spanish?

The awareness of stereotypes was always going to be there,

but there was probably less of an awareness

of how harmful it could be to portray those stereotypes.

This one, the joke is, like, purely on him.

You're supposed to laugh at him

for being a Spanish immigrant who doesn't speak the language.

I think he does have an exaggerated foreignness.

I loved Manuel. I really loved Manuel.

I can't stress that enough.

But I do think that there are elements

of the way that the character of Manuel was handled

that are uncomfortable today.

The Brits would be very condescending towards the Spanish.

That was a kind of arrogant way that... in general,

that the British felt towards foreigners.

Because we speak English, and if they don't understand English,

well, you know, "What's wrong with them?" sort of thing.

Which is completely unjustified.

It's, like, belittling him,

just making it seem like people that are "foreigners",

quote unquote, just... they don't understand.

They don't comprehend stuff. They're slow. They just...

Yeah, they're just there,

and the English people are, like, kind of superior.

It was clever in that it highlighted the British attitude,

which was archaic, when you think about it,

that somehow, just because we spoke English, we were superior.

I hope the wider audience would see that that wasn't supposed to happen.

Well, what do our audience think?

I'd definitely give it a kipper.

If somebody says something and it's funny

and it doesn't make sense, you say, "Don't worry, he's from Barcelona."

And people still, when they misunderstand things, say, "Que?"

It's one of the major catchlines from Fawlty Towers.

Definitely bell. Good for you.

Coming up, it wasn't just the Spanish

getting it from both barrels.

Here we go again. It's Pick On Ireland Week again.

And Cleese goes on the defensive.

Where I would disagree with Cleese

is the whole, "You're supposed to laugh AT him."

I'm blown away that that is... brave, I suppose.

STEVEN BERKOFF: By the 1970s, television sets were commonplace,

with over 90% of UK households owning one.

Quality of the TV was better because there was only three channels.

Three channels, yeah.

So the quality of the programme had to be good to attract the viewer.

And now our viewers of Gen Zs and baby boomers

are binge-watching the entire 12 episodes of Fawlty Towers.

And one of the standout episodes is The Builders.

When will you finish our garden wall?

We are tired of having that pile of bricks blocking...

Listen, I told you not to call.

My wife thinks Stubbs is doing the doors.

Basil has yet again made a poor decision.

The poor decision is to bring in builders

that he knows to be incompetent

because it's gonna save him a few bob.

And so he has to hide it from Sybil.

Now, that's a great little bit of fuel to drive the farce.

The phone's used many times in the series.

In this case, this is an interesting one

because he's having a double conversation.

He's talking to O'Reilly

whilst pretending to talk to the builder that Sybil wants.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. It's clever. It is clever.

That's such a comic construction which works so brilliantly well

because Basil sets it up,

much to Sybil's, er, disagreement.

If you study comedy, you'll recognise it for what it is.

"We're gonna hire in someone who's rubbish.

"What's gonna happen? They're gonna screw it up.

"And then we remove anyone with competence

"that can oversee the rubbish," and then hilarity ensues.

And who is the most incompetent character in Fawlty Towers?

Sin ofender, Manuel.

I go upstairs...

Ah, si, is easy.

..for a little sleep. Is difficult.

For siesta. Siesta? Little sleep?

Yes. Ah, same in Spanish!

When O'Reilly's men come, you must wake me.

What I thought was interesting here is,

they wanted to have Manuel deal with a very difficult situation.

So, they've set it up. So, he's there on his own.

There's no Sybil, there's no Basil, there's no Polly.

You are man with "Orally". What?

You Orally man. What does that mean?

You Orally! You watch it.

Where Orally?! What's he going on about?

He means O'Reilly. Wh...? Oh!

GIGGLES

We are Orally men.

Thick as a plank.

We still say "Orally men". "Should we get the Orally men in?"

I mean, whatever's...

You know, a plumber or a builder, "Should we get the Orally men in?"

I like the scripting there because, erm...

it means there's no way Manuel's gonna know what needs doing,

so it absolutely ensures that, er, later on in the episode,

that things have been completely set up.

The cheap O'Reilly builders from Ireland

do indeed make a mess of it,

which sends Basil into a panic, knowing Sybil is on her way home.

Rather you than me, Basil.

There's a lot of physicality in Fawlty Towers.

There's a lot of hitting in it, which I didn't like.

But there's one scene that I thought was really well done.

HE SOBS AND MOANS

Come on!

LAUGHTER

Initially, you go, "Whoa, where are you taking this?"

because it's believable, and it's believable

because he's been hitting everybody else up to this point,

and he's been beating up Manuel every other episode.

That's quite weird, right?

Cos he's a big guy going to hit a woman.

And, you know, it's not an OK thing to do.

So, when he got slapped by Polly,

I think that seemed perfectly acceptable

because that was a woman fighting back.

And I think we all thought that then, "Oh, good."

Again!

Harder!

Right, I'll call O'Reilly.

LAUGHTER

She slaps him another three or four times to snap him out of it.

It's actually a really interestingly choreographed scene.

We need that. We need her to slap him back after he went for her,

because even in 1975, that was a step too far.

Really, really interesting scene.

Cleese and Booth's scripts are often a portal

into the life of the 1970s and its wider society.

So, why were the builders Irish?

The Irish construction industry in Britain in the '70s,

when this was made, was to the fore,

and every second builder probably was Irish.

They'd come over from the '30s onwards,

and they were helping rebuild Britain after the war.

And, you know, 12% of nurses in the NHS were Irish in the '70s.

Ireland in the '70s was quite miserable, to be honest.

The economy was in ruins in Ireland, like, for a long time.

That's probably why a lot of Irish people up to then

had emigrated to England.

But rather than welcome them with open arms,

the Irish immigrants received a hostile reception.

In general, we were terribly disrespectful

to people from Ireland,

who were a part of the backbone

of some of the services that we all needed.

Two stereotypes around Irish people -

one, they're supposed to be stupid.

The other is that they're likely to be involved in the building trade.

There are also lots of jokes about Irish people being stupid,

and that was incredibly prevalent in '70s comedy.

IRISH ACCENT: This is Air Fungus speaking now.

How are you going? Nice to see you. LAUGHTER

And a special mention for my mum, who's at the tea kiosk

round the corner, by the cigarette shop.

We're announcing the departure of flight number double-oh zero-oh

to Belfast...

..I think.

I do remember programmes in the '70s,

like Jim Davidson on British TV, and he'd... Irish jokes.

I was quite offended by them, you know?

Back in the day, they had those -

which I would consider really offensive -

the Paddy Englishman, Paddy Scotsman,

Paddy Irishman jokes, which you never hear any more.

The Englishman is always the default, the norm,

the acceptable way of doing something,

whereas the Scotsman is always mean, and the Irishman is always stupid.

The unwarranted prejudice may have originated

because many of the young Irish immigrants

were young and only had primary education.

As for now...

Most Irish people are in well-paid jobs,

and they're pretty much, you know, on a par with people in Britain,

if not even better educated.

The complexity of the Irish language speaks to how intelligent they are.

Do you know that they have three different sets of numbers

according to what you're counting?

We only have one.

Ireland is the country that produced Oscar Wilde.

Clearly, the idea that a whole nation of people are stupid

is ridiculous.

But the 1970s IRA bombing campaign

added an extra layer of prejudice for Irish immigrants.

EUGENE: I remember coming to England in 1972, I first came.

Coming with an Irish-registered car would get a lot more attention.

You'd have to be careful where you parked it.

It immediately drew suspicion.

It's easy to forget, actually,

how fraught a time it was because of the Troubles.

Between the Troubles and the economy,

it was quite dark and quite desolate.

So, luckily, we had comedy to humour us up a bit, I suppose,

given the difficult times.

Ah, yes. Back to the comedy, Eugene.

He belongs in a zoo!

Oh, Sybil, you never give anyone the benefit of the doubt.

He's shoddy, he doesn't care.

He's a liar, he's incompetent, he's lazy.

He's nothing but a half-witted, thick, Irish joke!

Oh, hello, O'Reilly. How funny. We were just talking about you.

And then we got onto another Irish builder we used to know.

Oh, God, he was awful!

Here we go again. It's Pick On Ireland Week again.

It very much perpetuated the stereotypes that existed,

and it played into them.

Unlike when Basil's talking to the Major,

and the Major uses inappropriate words about the cricketers,

and Basil goes, "Mmm, I'm not sure I endorse this."

Unlike in that scene, in this scene,

Sybil lets loose, and there's nobody there to say,

"Uh, that's not OK."

Now, Sybil, that's enough.

Come on, mate, give us a smile.

That's it. Agh!

O'Reilly, I have seen more intelligent creatures than you

lying on their backs at the bottom of ponds.

I have seen better organised creatures than you

running round farmyards with their heads cut off.

Now, collect your things and get out. Agh!

The British people watching would have watched that and gone,

"Oh, yeah, so funny.

"These are the tropes that we have about the Irish."

I think that that's something

we definitely wouldn't be allowed to get away with now.

He has this incompetent builder who's Irish.

I think that's unfortunate.

But the context of when it was written has now moved on.

I was just looking at it as in they were just bad builders,

and I wasn't really thinking about the historical context and stuff.

The bit that did make me laugh was when she was ranting,

and then the guy walked in, cos that's, like, a funny concept.

But I didn't get any of the... I didn't realise

that that was, like... against Irish people, though.

Even the idea of, like, Basil being a cheapskate

and hiring cheap people, that could be funny as just, like,

he pretends to be this posh guy, but he's hiring,

like, the cheapest he can find.

But then they're intertwining the idea of being cheap

with being foreign or being Irish or being Spanish or whatever.

Which is degrading. Yeah.

Did you feel that it was out of order?

I felt it was about the character of that particular builder,

not Irish builders in general.

I felt it was just that particular builder.

I think, at that time,

there were a lot of Irish workers that came over.

There were, yeah.

And I think that's where that comes from, a bit.

So, did Booth and Cleese make a botched job of the builders?

I thought that, before I knew the context,

I sort of thought, like... thought it was a bit humorous.

But now that I know the context...

from what you guys said, I'd probably go kipper.

Do you know what? It was funny before that,

but I'm gonna give this one a kipper,

just that bit where she loses the plot, cos I wish she hadn't.

Coming up, it's just not cricket.

The first time I heard the word "racism"

is when I arrived in the UK.

And things go from bad to worse. CHANTING: "I can't breathe."

It was one of the most disgusting things we've seen in our time.

STEVEN BERKOFF: For many Gen Zs,

the Brexit referendum was the first time they got to vote.

But if you are a baby boomer, you might be saying...

You're joking? Not another one?!

The UK joined the EEC in 1973,

and in '75, a referendum asked

whether we should remain in the European Economic Community,

which later became the EU.

Basically, the opposite of Brexit and without the catchy title.

We know that Basil knows about that cos he refers to it

in one of the episodes - "I didn't vote for it."

Course he didn't vote for it, cos, you know, he's a Little Englander.

You'd had people going on foreign holidays.

That had started to happen because, basically,

it became affordable for ordinary people

to go on holiday, for example, to Spain.

And in return, it meant Europeans came on holiday to Old Blighty,

perhaps to a seaside hotel in Torquay.

Europeans such as the Germans.

Although it was 30-odd years since the end of the war,

there were still people within living memory.

I wasn't part of it, but my parents were.

What we live by today had been determined

by what happened in our history.

You can't erase that history easily.

You can't forget the war.

There was a generation that was... maybe one,

maybe almost two generations divorced from the war.

You're talking about the Silent Generation

and the Greatest Generation,

who had fought in the war and were getting on a little bit.

How did people not talk about the war more?

The war was closer to people in the 1970s

than things I remember as being...

you know, Margaret Thatcher was to us now.

My father's German. He grew up post-war.

I think that most German people were incredibly embarrassed

and reticent and, to a certain amount, ashamed.

My father wasn't born until after the war.

But in school, he was made to feel guilty

for something that he wasn't even a part of.

But clinging to the idea that the British holiday is still alive,

Basil wouldn't turn them away.

May I say how pleased we are to have some Europeans here

now that we are on the continent?

Can I speak to Dr Finn, please?

I didn't vote for it myself, honestly.

But now that we're in, I'm determined to make it work.

The whole scene is beautifully choreographed.

Not just physically, but also just the linguistics of it,

the words of it, and how he gets to that point.

We start seeing this freedom of movement,

and that's what we see in this episode,

is these Germans have come to Torquay on holiday.

And if there's one thing Germans love, it's a beach holiday.

But us Brits are famously awkward.

There's always an element of,

"Oh, God, the elephant in the corner, don't say anything."

"Oh, Christ, it's an elephant," and you blurt it out.

Because everybody's, you know, "Ooh."

Literally, "Don't mention the war."

There would have been awkwardness.

How do we handle them? What do we say? What do we do?

It's kind of awkward to look someone in the face

when you've beaten them at a world war.

Allow me to introduce myself. I am the owner of Fawlty Towers.

And may I welcome your war...

your war... you war... you war...

you ALL, and hope that your stay will be a happy one.

I think that the writing in the whole German bit

is all very complex.

You know, the bit where he goes,

"The war... I mean, your war... you war... you war... you all,"

that bit was beautifully done.

And again, he is the butt of that joke.

You know, he's concussed. He's trying not to mention the war.

Earlier in the episode, Basil had taken multiple blows

from different objects, including the moose.

Listen, don't mention the war.

I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it all right.

So, it's all forgotten now, and let's hear no more about it.

So, that's two egg mayonnaise,

a prawn Goebbels, a Hermann Goring and four Colditz salads.

No, wait a minute. I got a bit confused here.

Sorry, I got a bit confused cos everyone keeps mentioning the wars.

When you mention Fawlty Towers,

first thing that they talk about is...

"They said don't mention the war." That's right, yeah.

Playing on the idea that this was a taboo

between these two groups of people, I think, was quite clever.

The wordplay is exquisite in that scene.

The fact that he manages to put the name of prominent Nazis

into popular foodstuffs -

prawn Goebbels - that's really funny.

I think it's a very British thing to do that awkward, like,

you mention something you're not supposed to mention,

and then you end up doing it 50 times over.

I think that's very British humour.

Perhaps the most iconic scene of Fawlty Towers

is the climax of the Germans episode.

Here, watch. Who's this, then?

IMITATES HITLER, SHE SOBS

I'll do the funny walk!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

The crowning glory of that scene,

which is meant to be really so offensive,

is Basil doing the goose-stepping.

You know why he's doing it and what he's referring to.

But yet it's funny seeing John Cleese do it.

He does an incredible goose-step.

I mean, it's an amazing movement of his legs.

I'm trying to cheer her up, you stupid Kraut!

LAUGHTER

Funny?! Not funny? You're joking!

It's not funny for her, not for us, not for any German people.

You have absolutely no sense of humour, do you?

This is not funny!

Who won the bloody war anyway?!

But was making light of the war and our attitudes to Germans funny,

or big, or clever?

I don't know if people know this.

Germans love that episode.

My father's favourite episode of Fawlty Towers

is the Germans episode.

That was an important part of the healing and the bonding.

My father was working in very international settings in the '70s.

In fact, he said, in one workplace,

you know, he was their favourite Nazi.

In my opinion, I thought it maybe reflected

the time of when it was filmed,

that, collectively, everyone was trying to process

the huge trauma of World War II.

I'd give that a bell. Bell!

The epitome of Fawlty Towers, so two bells for me.

BELL DINGS, SHE CHUCKLES

Cleese's mocking of British awkwardness towards the Germans

may have been given the seal of approval,

but in 2013, when repeating The Germans pre-watershed,

the BBC decides to censor racial slurs

from the Major's cricket anecdote.

Remember the notorious scene from earlier?

I don't personally think we should censor.

I'm a firm believer in the truth...

and that what stood then, however flawed, should remain.

But for some, the Major has tainted the legacy of Fawlty Towers.

I always call her Winnie... Well, because she looks like Winnie.

She's not Black.

Black? Churchill wasn't Black. LAUGHTER

I think the Major was well acted.

I mean, in what he says and his attitude to things.

The Major is totally round the twist.

He's obviously... Had been badly affected by the war.

It was thought that there were people like that at the time.

The '70s were a funny time.

It was a time where Britain was very much changing.

And the Major is a man out of his time in this changing country.

MANUEL: I can speak English.

I learn it from a book.

Did you? Did you really?

The Major was absolutely foxed and, you know, perplexed by this.

If it happened to you, you could...

"What is that...? Why... Why is this animal speaking to me?"

And, you know, it's terribly effectively done.

But there are some who felt

that the Major's ramblings shouldn't have even made it

onto the British prime-time TV in the first place.

The first time I heard the word "racism"

is when I arrived in the UK.

Tony Bowry left the West Indies in a boat headed for the UK

the day after Winston Churchill died in 1965.

Once in the UK, Tony settled in Leeds.

My first experience of racism was in a church,

in the Leeds Cathedral.

At the end of one service, the local priest came and told me

I must go to a church in Chapeltown, "where my friends are".

Tony became part of what is now known as the Windrush generation.

The Windrush generation were invited over to the country

to help rebuild the country from World War II.

And for Tony, it was also an opportunity to get involved

in a shared love of cricket. All right.

This was going to be an opportunity for them to create a new life

in a place where they were going to be accepted and welcomed.

The West Indies cricket team were a formidable force.

They won the inaugural World Cup in 1975,

handed to them by Prince Philip.

It was terribly, terribly relevant,

and I think that's what makes...

you know, the whole 40 episodes so interesting.

Yes, I think the Major would be nicely prejudiced

about the West Indies playing a game

and playing it so well when it had a very English root.

Brothers Adnan and Aman,

whose parents migrated from India, had similar experiences.

I think they called us the P-word and they told us to,

you know, "F off back to where you're from," and things like that.

It is historically recorded

that people went around seeing signs saying,

"No Irish, no Blacks, no dogs."

That was the degree of the prejudice.

So when Basil and the Major have these conversations,

and when there are odd references to this,

it immediately strikes a chord.

So, why did John Cleese and Connie Booth put this on TV?

Well, in Cleese's audio commentary on the Fawlty Towers Blu-Ray,

he gives us an insight.

'There's a lot in this speech. Listen carefully.'

HE BABBLES INCOHERENTLY

Never came back. What a shame.

And the strange thing...

'There's a punch line to that in a moment.'

She kept referring to the Indians as... BLEEP.

No, no, no, no, no...

'Now, would one get away with that these days?

'I don't think so. I don't think so.'

If you're trying to educate people,

I don't think comedy's the medium to try and do that. Absolutely.

In some ways, it's educated the racists

because it said, "These are the words that you should be using."

Cleese goes on to explain

that the Major was supposed to be a figure of fun,

and therefore you could make fun of racial attitudes.

'If you were worried about it and then didn't do that kind of humour,

'then a whole range of satirical humour

'would disappear from our culture.

'So I don't think that you can edit humour

'because it may be misunderstood by idiots.'

Where I would disagree with Cleese

is the whole, "You're supposed to laugh AT him."

I think nowadays we would say, no, you're supposed to tell him off.

You're not supposed to laugh at him and go,

"Isn't he silly for using the wrong word?"

"Why can't you have a bit of fun?"

Well, it's not funny.

And Irish know all about it as well,

because they've been lampooned, and Asians, over t'years,

so it's no different.

I'm blown away that that is... brave, I suppose.

Cos he's not really doing anything overly clever.

He's just saying, "Racism is bad," very, like, subtly,

which is, like... not that crazy of a thing to say. Yeah.

No matter how old you are, it's upsetting, and it hurts.

Start using the N-word,

and it were much worse, I thought, Keith, than taking a punch.

I don't think it was right then,

it's not right now, and it never will be.

Coming up, is Fawlty Towers about to be consigned

to the dustbin of history?

It was one of the most appalling things I've ever seen.

STEVEN BERKOFF: The year is 1975.

Labour are in power,

Liverpool are embarking on a title-winning season,

Rod Stewart is on a world tour,

and Fawlty Towers hits our screens for the first time.

Well, may I ask what you were expecting to see

out of a Torquay hotel bedroom window?

Sydney Opera House, perhaps? The Hanging Gardens of Babylon?

Herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically?

Don't be silly. I expect to be able to see the sea.

You can see the sea.

It's over there, between the land and the sky.

LAUGHTER

She says there's no view,

and we can see in the cheap set that there is a view there.

CHUCKLES

"It's over there, between the land and the sky."

It was also quite erudite, right? "What would you expect to see?

"The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, perhaps?"

That's because Cleese was, you know, university-educated,

so he had all that in his armoury.

Fast forward 50 years, Labour are in power,

Liverpool top the league,

Rod Stewart's a little bit less sexy,

and British comedy fans are treated

to a West End reboot of Fawlty Towers.

I saw the stage play just a few months ago and loved it.

It was hilarious.

It was the greatest hits, basically, all together on stage,

and it worked perfectly.

But rewind five years, and a global news story would go on

to prompt the BBC to review some of its back catalogue,

including Fawlty Towers.

So, in 2020, George Floyd got murdered,

and that triggered a review at the BBC

in which this episode got taken down because of what the Major said.

With the horrendous tragedy of the George Floyd murder,

that did jolt people into reassessing

how we were portraying different races on television.

And quite rightly, the George Floyd incident got us talking.

'Fawlty Towers regularly tops polls as one of our best-loved sitcoms.

'Tonight, UKTV, a channel controlled by the BBC,

'has confirmed to Newsnight

'that it's removed the "don't mention the war" episode.'

"My God, did we say that?"

Or, "Was that allowed to happen?"

And, "Should we do that?" and, "Oh, does that make it...?"

"Oh, God, that's not funny any more."

So that was a kind of watershed moment.

John Cleese, though, stood by his work.

I think that the BBC is a slightly special case.

They do have a little bit more of a responsibility

to make sure that all people in the country

are feeling serviced by that service.

A month later, and UKTV reinstated the episode.

REPORTER: UKTV is to bring back the Fawlty Towers episode The Germans,

saying viewers will be warned about its content.

Fair enough to say, "There is language that you won't like

"and attitudes to race

"or... other cultural aspects."

You can't rewrite history, and you shouldn't.

Oh, you can't rewrite history, but you can rewrite the future.

The Fawlty Towers stage play

is an amalgamation of three classic Fawlty Towers episodes,

including The Germans,

which raised questions about the use of the N-word in the reversion.

I'd say don't use it.

I don't think there's any case for that in the stage play now.

Cleese was challenged on using the N-word

at the press launch for the stage play.

Have you had to airbrush parts of it for modern sensibility?

A couple of things, and I wouldn't have done it in a perfect world.

But you know what social media's like.

People get so excited, it's not worth the candle.

So we changed a couple of the Major's lines, but nothing else.

Yeah. Anything else?

I don't agree with policing of language.

But at the same time,

I also don't agree with upsetting people unnecessarily.

So I think he made the right call.

They got it right in not using it.

I think today, where there is so much hard discrimination around,

the people who did the play

are quite responsible not to use it in that way.

So, where does this leave the legacy of Fawlty Towers?

I think the legacy of Fawlty Towers is that it will go down

as one of the most famous comedies ever on television.

You got the iconic elements,

like Basil Fawlty beating the car with the tree branch.

That's always gonna be, I think, one of the top moments

in British history in terms of comedy.

Our generational viewers awarded 12 bells and four kippers,

so I guess it's not completely cancelled.

And the Gen Zs liked it much more than we thought they would,

which goes to show you,

you shouldn't stereotype people for comic purposes,

even if it is really, really funny.

I think that we can all look back on Fawlty Towers

with 80%, 90% degree of fondness and pride

for it being a wonderful British product of British comedy.

But the Major, that scene today is incredibly problematic.

I hope you've enjoyed your stay here at Fawlty Towers.

And if we notice so much as a facecloth missing from your room,

we will be issuing a warrant for your immediate arrest.

Good night.