Fawlty heat in R.I. hotel earns Cleese complaint
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — British actor and comedian John Cleese, who once portrayed an inept hotel manager in the series “Fawlty Towers,” has complained about his treatment at a Rhode Island hotel.
Cleese, 80, tweeted Sunday to his 5.7 million followers that he was cold inside his room at the Omni Providence Hotel and that the hotel staff could do nothing to help him.
“I am staying in the Omni hotel in Providence, RI. My room is cold. They can do nothing to warm it,” Cleese tweeted. “Other hotels provide me with a heater. They can’t do this as it would be a fire hazard ! They point out that they have 562 rooms. Perhaps I should have stayed in a smaller hotel?”
He later posted that his tweeting had worked and the hotel had fixed the problem.
The hotel told the Providence Journal that its engineering staff was dispatched to resolve the issue shortly after receiving Cleese’s complaint.
“Upon review, we learned the in-room HVAC did not automatically adjust as it is meant to and required a manual adjustment,” the hotel said in a statement. “Our general manager has reached out to the guest in an effort to confirm resolution and improve guest satisfaction.” In “Fawlty Towers,” Cleese played the manager of a substandard English hotel who was known to express disdain toward “that annoying section of the general public who insist on staying at hotels.”
Cleese, who also is founding member of the comedy troupe Monty Python, tweeted that he believed his problem in Providence, where he performed on Sunday, was resolved, “Because I have the power to tweet. But NOT, of course, because I am a member of the public. So much for corporate America.”