Future of the real Fawlty Towers remains uncertain

The future of a world-famous hotel that inspired the classic comedy Fawlty Towers has been thrown into question. The future of the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay remains uncertain after councillors rejected a plan to convert it into a retirement home.

Rare photos capture Fawlty Towers birth 40 years ago

Enjoy an exclusive look at what happened when RT went on set for the birth of the classic comedy in 1974.

Radio Times review

Assuming you haven't got the VHS, the DVD or seen it seven times on G.O.L.D., The Psychiatrist (series 2 episode 2: "Watery Fowls") looks as zingy and agonising as it did in 1979.

Sybil flirts with an open-shirted guest (or "Piltdown ponce") while Basil fawns on a couple who are both doctors - until he learns one is a psychiatrist. There's so much to love in the way that from there his spasms of overreaction build to disaster on the first-floor landing, not least the insults exchanged by the "brilliantine stick insect" and the "coiffured old sow".

Fawlty Towers: 7 facts and anecdotes

Did you know how tough Manuel actor Andrew Sachs was or why Major Gowen was censored?

Andrew Sachs remembers filming Fawlty Towers in 1975

This is a scene from 'The Builders', the second episode of Fawlty Towers, in which Basil Fawlty [John Cleese] carries me to the hotel dining-room windows in an attempt to explain that he would like them cleaned. I wasn't hurt, but there were instances when I wasn't so lucky.

Andrew Sachs: 'John Cleese once hit me so hard'

The actor on Sachsgate, fleeing the Nazis and being thumped by Basil Fawlty.

Letters of note: Fawlty Towers rejection in 1974

In a note to the head of comedy and light entertainment, Ian Main turns down one of Britain's most famous sitcoms.

Why can't we laugh at the old jokes any more?

A 'racist' joke in Fawlty Towers has been cut because it might offend. Well, it might - if you didn't get the joke.

Fawlty Towers isn't racist. Major Gowen is

The BBC's cutting of racial insults from a repeat of The Germans has brought the integrity of the hit comedy show into question. But the words are clearly used to satirise English upper-class bigotry.

BBC cuts the Major's 'racist' lines from Fawlty Towers

In one scene one of the hotel's permanent residents, Major Gowen, uses derogatory terms to describe black people. It was included in the episode's first airing in October 1975, but this time around the major's words were edited out.