Fawlty Towers Hotel Re-Launched in Torquay

For people of a certain age and with a certain sense of humor, the most important hotel in the world is not in New York, Tokyo or Paris. It’s in Torquay, on the English Riviera. The Gleneagles Hotel was formerly run by Donald Sinclair, whom John Cleese of Monty Python fame said was, “the most wonderfully rude man I have ever met.” Mr. Cleese used his stay there to create “Fawlty Towers,” perhaps the finest sitcom in the English language. The hotel has been saved from demolition and is opening again for business, without the rants and abuse.

Mr. Sinclair inspired the creation of Basil Fawlty, a hotelier for whom guests were the ultimate inconvenience, by plain uncivilized behavior. When the Python crew stayed there, he actually yelled at Terry Gilliam for eating his meat with his fork in his left hand “like an American,” which Mr. Gilliam is. Eric Idle had one of his bags removed because Mr. Sinclair thought it might be a bomb; when Mr. Idle asked why anyone would bomb the hotel, Mr. Sinclair said, “We've had a lot of staff problems lately.” He rounded out the stay by throwing a timetable at a guest who wondered when the next bus into town was. Mr. Cleese even used the name “Donald Sinclair” as his character’s name in the film “Rat Race” some years later.

Not surprisingly, the hotel had fallen on hard times, and property developers got hold of it, intending to put up luxury apartments (which is what they do). The Torquay Council refused permission, realizing that there was plenty of Torquay on which to build more such flats and noting that the hotel was a cultural icon. What was needed was a renovation.

Enter the new owners, Brian Shone and Terry Taylor who have turned it into a chic 41-room hotel. At first, they weren’t too sure about the tie to the series, rather tenuous they felt. They were wrong. Manager Sue Pine told Reuters: “It is quite bizarre. Every day you sit in reception and they come in by the coachload from America, Germany and Holland to see you. We have a big poster in reception and they all have their photo taken.”

Unfortunately, the hotel that one sees at the beginning of each episode (with letters from “Fawlty Towers” rearranged into other words – some rather rude) is not the Gleneagles. The producers used The Woodburn Grange Country Club in Buckinghamshire for that shot. Sadly, it burned down in 1991. Still, the next time one is in Torquay, where else would one stay -- Asheldon Road, Wellswood, Torquay, Devon, TQ1 2QS, England, phone: 1803 293637.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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