Played waiter on ‘Fawlty Towers’

Andrew Sachs, a seasoned farceur who portrayed the diminutive, dunderheaded and muchabused Spanish waiter Manuel on “Fawlty Towers,” widely regarded as one of the best sitcoms of all time, died Nov. 23 in London. He was 86.

His family said the cause was vascular dementia.

“Fawlty Towers,” which comic actor John Cleese helped create for the BBC, had only a fleeting initial run. But the show later drew a devoted fan base through its repeats on American public television. Mervyn Rothstein of the New York Times called “Fawlty Towers” the “paragon of sitcoms,” and many other reviewers noted its deft blend of slapstick with the angry humor of its embattled characters.

Mr. Cleese, the former “Monty Python” star, played a rude, incompetent, quick-to-rage seaside hotelier, Basil Fawlty. Basil was besieged by his dominating wife, Sybil (played by Prunella Scales) and constantly threatened to deport the doltish Manuel, who seemed unable to comprehend basic English.

“There is too much butter on those trays,” Basil tells Manuel in one episode.

“No, no, no, señor,” Manuel replies. “Not ‘on those trays.’ Uno, dos, tres.”

Mr. Sachs, a stage veteran of such romps as “Let Sleeping Wives Lie” and “No Sex Please, We’re British,” was often called on in “Fawlty” to deploy his skills as a physical comedian. To guests, Basil offered by way of apology, “I’m so sorry, he’s from Barcelona.”

In 2000, the British Film Institute ranked “Fawlty Towers” first in a list of the top 100 British television shows of all time.

For Mr. Sachs, the show often overshadowed a wideranging career that also included portrayals of Albert Einstein on television and Arthur Conan Doyle’s Doctor Watson on the radio.