Connie Booth

Monty Python's 10 funniest sketches

As a Monty Python treasure-trove arrives on Netflix - including Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Life of Brian and Monty Python's Flying Circus - it's the perfect moment to look back at 10 of the very best sketches from the masters of surreal comedy.

John Cleese hits out at 'Faulty' show

John Cleese has hit out at Faulty Towers The Dining Experience, the unofficial homage to the legendary TV series written by Cleese and Connie Booth. In an interview he has talked about taking legal action.

How Fawlty Towers almost never opened its' doors

As the story goes, in May of 1974, following a now legendary 1972 stay at the Gleneagles Hotel by members of the Monty Python troupe, a pilot script written by John Cleese and his then-wife, Connie Booth, was submitted to the BBC. A clearly unimpressed 'comedy script editor' by the name of Ian Main sent the following memo to BBC Television's Head of Comedy and Light Entertainment.

John Cleese: girlfriend is first real love since Connie

He has been married three times and is said to be considering tying the knot once more. And now actor John Cleese has revealed how - unlike his second and third marriages - he had an instant connection with latest girlfriend Jennifer Wade reminiscent of that with first wife Connie Booth.

It may have only been 12 episodes, but more than 30 years after its debut Fawlty Towers remains one of our favourite sitcoms. This documentary looks at how the show came into being and why it turned out a classic. Michael Palin suggests it's survived because its "precision comedy" and Basil Fawlty's hysterical character were a symptom of the times. Not everyone was enamoured with it though - a BBC executive described it as "dire". Cast members John Cleese, Connie Booth, Andrew Sachs and Prunella Scales all contribute their recollections of making the programme.

This joyous look back at John Cleese's benchmark sitcom delivers everything you could hope for. For the first time, Cleese, ex-wife Connie Booth, screen wife Prunella Scales and Andrew Sachs, together with producer-director John Howard Davies, re-call how the shows came about.

Cleese's anecdotes about the Torbay hotelier who inspired the monstrous Basil are as funny as the gold-plated clips. And that's saying something, since Fawlty Towers' slapstick violence has tremendous impact in short bursts.

Add interviews with many of the sitcom's guest stars, including Bernard Cribbins, Una Stubbs, Geoffrey Palmer and David Kelly and you have real depth and detail. If only the start of each section wasn't delayed by unnecessary come-ons, it would be the perfect documentary for the perfect sitcom.

This theory sits Fawlty Towers (BBC2) like a tea cosy over a tom cat. Here and there but hardly. Funny foreigners, awful wives? That great whoosh of laughter as Sybil Fawlty excused Manuel, the poor dago with all the phoney warmth of an electric log fire in her voice "He's from Barcelona." It was Fawlty's finest hour.

In 'Fawlty Towers' humour takes off for the Empyrean from an airstrip firmly constructed in reality. That the wife should possess all the emotional coherence, and the husband be continually falling apart, seems to me not just an elementary role-reversal but a general truth of such power that it is only in comedy you will see it stated.