50 years since Fawlty Towers was first aired on TV

It is 50 years since Fawlty Towers first appeared on our screens, with the farcical comedy series still enjoying a large and devoted fanbase.

Audiences were introduced to John Cleese as rude hotel owner Basil Fawlty for the very first time on September 19 1975.

Also starring Prunella Scales as Fawlty’s wife Sybil, the late Andrew Sachs as hapless Spanish waiter Manuel, and Cleese’s then-wife Connie Booth as chambermaid Polly, the first series of six episodes was broadcast on BBC Two.

The show aired to mixed reviews, but became popular with audiences and won the Bafta for best scripted comedy in 1976.

A further six episodes followed in 1979, and 50 years on, the comedy still regularly appears at the top of lists of the best shows and characters of all time, with a 100% score on ratings website Rotten Tomatoes.

Based on a real-life hotel owner, Donald Sinclair, Cleese came up with the idea for the character Basil Fawlty when he and the rest of the Monty Python comedy group stayed at Sinclair’s Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay, Devon.

Cleese said he became fascinated with Sinclair’s rude behaviour, and he and Booth went on to co-write Fawlty Towers, setting it in a fictional hotel in Torquay.

Memorable quotes include “don’t mention the war” said by Fawlty as he serves a group of German guests in an episode titled The Germans.

Another favourite is when approached by a guest complaining that she requested a room with a view, Fawlty sarcastically asks if she expected to be able to see Sydney Opera House, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, or “herds of wildebeests swinging majestically?”.

Despite the show’s success, Cleese said he did not want to write a third series in case it was not as good as the others.

He told the BBC last year: “We felt after 12 shows that we’d done the best we could possibly do, and that if we did another series people would probably say ‘well it was very funny, but it wasn’t as good as the first two series’.”

But the much-loved characters have been revived for a stage production, which Cleese wrote by using material from three of his favourite episodes – The Hotel Inspector and The Germans from series one and Communication Problems from series two – and adapted into a two-hour play.

Cleese has described the script as “very, very funny”, with the production due to go on tour around the UK later this month following a stint in London’s West End.