Fawlty given room on his own by the seaside

Basil Fawlty, television's hapless, hen-pecked, politically incorrect hotelier, is to be immortalised by a life-size statue in Torquay, where Fawlty Towers - named Britain's greatest programme by the British Film Institute - was filmed.



Basil, played by John Cleese, was conceived after the Monty Python team stayed at the Gleneagles hotel in the Devon seaside resort in 1970. Cleese described its owner, Donald Sinclair, as 'the most wonderfully rude man I have ever met'.

Sinclair allegedly put Eric Idle's suitcase containing his alarm clock behind a garden wall, believing it contained a bomb, prompting Cleese to write Fawlty Towers.

Cleese said the statue sounded 'like a splendid idea'.