End for Fawlty’s hotel

LONDON: The hotel that inspired Fawlty Towers is to be knocked down after developers secured permission to convert the site into a retirement home.

John Cleese based the hilarious sitcom on the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay, Devon, after staying there with the Monty Python team in 1973. The former owner, Donald Sinclair, unwittingly became the inspiration for Cleese’s character, Basil Fawlty.

The 41- bedroom hotel ceased operating early this year and Torbay Council approved an application by Churchill Retirement Living to use the site for 36 retirement flats.

Planning officers allowed the change because the former hotel was “commercially unviable” with little passing trade and some distance from the town and harbour.

In Fawlty Towers, Basil’s escapades included trying to hide a rat from a hygiene inspector. The show was voted No 1 in the British Film Institute’s 100 Greatest Television Programmes. – The Independent