For any Fawlty Towers fans out there ...

[Matilda]

The real-life model for Sybil Fawlty has died this week, aged 95.

I didn't realise there were real-life models for Basil and Sybil, but there were, and they were Donald and Beatrice Sinclair.

"Sinclair and her husband, Donald, a retired Royal Navy commander, were running the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay when John Cleese and the Monty Python team came to stay in the summer of 1970 while filming in nearby Paignton.

"Donald Sinclair's particular brand of hospitality, which the Pythons claimed included throwing Eric Idle's suitcase over a cliff because he thought it contained a bomb, flinging a timetable at a guest who asked when the next bus left and scolding Terry Gilliam for leaving his knife and fork at an angle rather than together, 'as we do it in England', is said to have inspired Fawlty Towers.

"Cleese later described the hotelkeeper as 'the most wonderfully rude man I have ever met' and his wife as domineering. Michael Palin, who recalled that she threatened them with a bill for a stay of two weeks even though most of the team checked out as soon as they could, noted that every request seemed to be the 'most unforgivable imposition'."

http://www.smh.com.au/national/obituaries/fawlty-towers-gave-her-nothing-to-laugh-about-20100924-15qgw.html

[Suich]

1. Funny!

Thanks for posting!

:hi:

[nolabear]

2. One of my absolute faves. RIP and LOL!

[a kennedy]

3. RIP.....

and one of the best shows, we loved it.

[RagAss]

4. A masterpiece of British Comedy and comedy in general.

[UTUSN]

5. And CLEESE's t.v. wife was his real ex-wife? He told Graham NORTON last week

that when he divorced (that one? or another one?) the court gave her $30M and let him keep $8M and he has to give her $1M each year. He was yukking it up about it all. He said the years gap between the only two seasons of Fawlty was due to the real life marriage situation.

[tanyev]

7. Close--he was married to the actress who played Polly, not Sybil.

[UTUSN]

8. The plethora of ?s showed I wasn't being declarative about it!1 n/t

[Matilda]

9. This was his latest ex-wife, who took him for all she could.

Connie Booth, an American actress who played Polly in the series, was married to Cleese at the time (and managed to do a reasonably good Aussie accent - it's a hard one to do). They divorced, but there was no bitterness there, as there has been with the last one (not sure how many there have been).

[UTUSN]

10. On the Graham NORTON show, he said he's with a young'un who's NOT a golddigger!1 n/t

[tigereye]

6. ah, that's pretty wild- my husband loves that show, while I ended up cringing

through the little of it I could stand to watch. This puts it in a somewhat different perspective! :rofl:

[MiddleFingerMom]

11. One of the most OUTRAGEOUSLY silly and funny shows EVER!!! n/t

[emilyg]

12. Agree.