‘It’ s pretty action packed !’

Fifty years after John Cleese and co began recording

Fawlty Towers, he’s bringing what’s been hailed as the greatest British sitcom of all time to the West End. Written by Cleese himself, the stage version recreates three classic episodes (The Hotel Inspector, The Germans and Communication Problems) with a cast that includes Adam Jackson-Smith as Basil and Anna-Jane Casey as Sybil. Here, John tells us why it’s going to be even funnier...

When you and your then wife, Connie Booth, originally wrote the sitcom, how did the BBC respond to it?

I said ‘We’d like to do something set in a hotel’ and they went ‘Fine’. Nowadays you would have to go through three committees, none of whom would have any idea what they are talking about. [Laughs] Although when I handed in the first script one guy said, ‘This is full of stereotypical characters and clichéd situations and I cannot see it being anything other than a total flop’.

How did you decide which episodes to include? It was a case of, ‘Everyone loves that one’ or ‘This one features such a wonderful character’. It’s pretty actionpacked moving from one story to another. But Caroline Jay Ranger, who is codirecting this with me, is doing all the heavy lifting. I just come in at the last moment to say things to the actors like ‘Don’t look at him when you say that’.

Are you precious about how the cast are treating your script? [Laughs] No, no! I’m open to all their ideas. I don’t like directors who behave as though they own the whole thing. Why use the intelligence of one man, when you can

have the intelligence of the whole cast and crew? I wish that were the case with the House of Commons…

What made you think it would work on stage? Farce is better played in the theatre than anywhere else. With TV or film there’s an editor who makes the choice about where you’re looking, but in theatre – especially if you sit in the middle of the stalls, so not too close – you see all the different things that are going on at the same time. That makes it even funnier.

● Fawlty Towers: The Play is at the Apollo Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, London. For tickets, see fawltytowerswestend.com