The Destruction of Fawlty Towers

Last year, I visited Torquay for two reasons. One was that it was the English city where Agatha Christie lived and wrote her stories. Another was its association with Monty Python and Fawlty Towers.

While planning out our trip, I studied the Hotel Gleneagles' website. It stated that not only could I stay there, but I could see a live dinner show based on the Fawlty Towers TV series. As the six writers and actors responsible for the Monty Python TV show had stayed in Gleneagles, and their visit inspired member John Cleese to create the Fawlty Towers TV series, this seemed like an irresistible opportunity. 

Sadly, although the website was still operating, Gleneagles had already closed by this time.

Still time for a swim?

During our visit to Torquay, my wife and I visited the property. It had not yet reopened, and no cars were in the parking lot. But little signs, here and there, advertised its connection with Basil Fawlty, the fictional owner, and his bumbling assistant Manuel, the hotel bellhop and waiter. I peered in through the windows, and looked through the side gate. I saw a cover over the pool, and an empty hotel lobby. But no one inside, enjoying this place of living history. 

While I was there, another car pulled up, and a local man got out. He took some photographs of the hotel with his phone, and we chatted for awhile. He enthused about the Hotel's association with Fawlty Towers, a show he loved and regarded as a classic British sitcom. He kindly took this photograph of me standing before the entrance.

When I discovered the article on the purchase and renovation of Moorlands House in Hay Tor, where Agatha Christie wrote her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, I decided to search for any developments of Hotel Gleneagles. Instead of learning that it had been also refurnished, redeveloped, and that I would be able to stay there, I learned that the building had been torn down earlier this year. So, Agatha Christie's historic hotel gets saved, and John Cleese's gets razed? One is cosseted, the other destroyed? Sometimes, life just doesn't seem fair.

Still, I got to go there, and see the historic Gleneagles Hotel, before it was lost to history forever. Or, as the Daleks would say, before Fawlty Towers was exterminated, Exterminated, EXTERMINATED!!!

Dragon Dave

Torquay, Fawlty Towers & Agatha Christie

The first time I heard of Torquay, I was watching Fawlty Towers. Basil & Sybil Fawlty were trying something new in their boutique hotel. "Gourmet Night" was to set Torquay alight, giving cultured residents and visitors another opportunity to mix, mingle, and sample epicurean delights. Instead, like all Basil's plans, the first and only event collapsed in catastrophic fashion.

Still, as I watched "Gourmet Night," and the other eleven episodes of Fawlty Towers, I wondered what Torquay was like. While never making serious plans, I thought: "If I ever travel to England, that's a city I could visit."

Well, why not?

As I've since learned, no part of the famous sitcom was actually filmed in Torquay. According to recent reports, the hotel it was based on, Gleneagleas, has closed and may not reopen. But as my wife and I make this year's plans to visit England, Torquay is on our itinerary. This time, it has nothing to do with Fawlty Towers, and everything to do with Agatha Christie.

I can't say I fell in love with Agatha Christie's stories, although I did read her novel Ten Little Indians in my teens. But the TV series based on her works, particularly that of Hercule Poirot, have become favorite viewing in our household. The TV series led me to her stories, and I've recently enjoyed the first two Poirot novels. Both kept me awake hours after I laid down in bed at night, and made me want to read more of her page-turning prose. 

Agatha Christie was born in Torquay. Although she left it numerous times, the seaside English town always drew her back. Eventually, she bought a home there, Greenway, which she visited each summer. While she existed in other places, Torquay was the place she felt she really came alive. We look forward to our visit to Torquay this year, and seeing the surroundings that formed and inspired her. 

I've dallied with the idea of making a second blog, one devoted solely to Agatha Christie, and linking it with Dragon Cache. There I could post my plans, my thoughts, my reflections on Agatha Christie as we prepare for this year's journey. Of course, I could also share that portion of our England journey on that site. It's an idea; I haven't made up my mind yet. If I do so, I'll post the link on the upper right hand corner of this blog, right below Pocket Dalek, so you can easily find it.

Still, I can't help but marvel. Decades after Fawlty Towers made me wonder about Torquay, I'm finally traveling there, and doing so because of Agatha Christie's Poirot. The TV series has lasted for far longer than two seasons and a mere twelve episodes, and I've come to love even more than Fawlty Towers. Doesn't that seem just a little amazing? 

Dragon Dave

A Real Fawlty Towers

This Fawlty Towers proudly offers "No tan lines."

One of the first British comedies I came to love was “Fawlty Towers.”  This wasn’t a whirlwind romance on my part, as it took me some time to understand the TV show.  It didn’t help that, back in those days, you could only see all twelve episodes by buying four VHS videotapes, each of which cost $20.  But gradually I collected them, until I had the final set.  As I grew more familiar with the stories, and the characters, I came to love them.

Sure, sometimes the plots seemed over-the-top, comedy-wise, but all the characters came across as real and vibrant.  Basil Fawlty, who owned and ran the little hotel, believed that excellence in all areas should be strived for, and expected his guests to feel the same.  His wife, the ever patient Sybil, understood his concern, but felt he should relax his expectations of others, and accept them for who they were.  Polly, their waitress and housekeeper, was hardworking, loyal, and tolerant.  And then there was her fellow staff member, Manuel, who strived to better himself through working in a foreign country and learning English.  He might have been naïve, but he saw his situation as a glass half-full, grateful for everything he received, and as a result, (nearly) always happy.

Some might see Basil as intolerant, but it's easy to judge others, or brand them with simplistic labels.  Basil accepts the character foibles of his older, long-term residents, namely Major Gowen, Miss Tebbs, and Miss Gatsby, even if he sometimes tries to hide them from those he regards as their social betters.  He believes that the incompetent contractor, Mr. O’Reilly, will eventually complete building and repair jobs at a professional level, if only he continues to entrust him with his work.  He refuses to relinquish the beliefs he was raised with, particularly the belief that the aristocracy should be held above reproach.  When Sybil and Polly try to convince him that the guest posing as Lord Melbury is a fraud, Basil refuses to accept their accusations until they show him conclusive proof: that the valuables “Lord Melbury” has locked in the hotel safe are actually two bricks. 

Basil Fawlty may not be perfect, but in many ways he’s like us.  He sets high standards for himself and others, and expects all of us to strive to achieve them.  He refuses to relinquish his dreams, even when others in a similar position would have given up running the hotel, and opted for divorce rather than continue working at a dysfunctional relationship with Sybil.  Sure, he could benefit from a little loosening up in his expectations of others.  Sure, he might be more at peace with the world if he could “go with the flow,” and allow each person to act as he or she saw fit.  But if we’re honest, I think all of us see ourselves as works in progress, rather than having achieved some sort of individual perfection.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, one of the things I had to try when we visited England this year was kipper.  One of the reasons was because I had seen characters in British Comedies eating kippers so often.  As it happened, one of the first VHS tapes I purchased contained the episode “The Kipper and the Corpse.”  In this episode, Basil takes kippers, along with the rest of the man’s breakfast, up to a second floor guestroom.  Unfortunately, he doesn’t realize that the man has died during the night, and when he learns of the man’s death, he initially believes the kippers were off and the man died of food poisoning.  Hijinks ensue as he tries, in various ways, to hide the kippers, as well as the dead man, from everyone else staying in his hotel.  Above all, he can’t allow this one regrettable incident to sully his hotel’s reputation!

The other day, we happened across a real Fawlty Towers.  No, this one isn’t located in Torquay, England, but in Cocoa Beach, Florida.  I don’t know who the manager is, or if the staff operate a restaurant.  If they serve food, I’m guessing that they don’t have kippers on the menu.  But from the looks of it, whoever runs the hotel is definitely looser than Basil Fawlty in his expectations of others.  It seems like a place where a guest can really “go with the flow,” and act as he or she sees fit. 

Whether that’s a good thing or not, I’ll let you make your own judgments. 

Dragon Dave

Related Dragon Cache entries

The Kipper and the Corpse

Related Internet Links

Fawlty Towers Resort