Fawlty Towers (1975–1979)

Perhaps Basil Fawlty should have listened to his doctors. The Reluctant Patient can see the problem with that immediately.

Fawlty Towers is a farcical sitcom set in a spectacularly dysfunctional hotel in Torquay, Devon.

The idea was inspired by a real Torquay hotel where the Monty Python team stayed in 1970. John Cleese was fascinated by the extraordinary behaviour of its proprietor and, with his then-wife Connie Booth, eventually turned the experience into one of Britain’s best-known sitcoms.

There were only twelve episodes — two series of six — which still comes as a surprise considering how many scenes and lines from the programme have become part of British popular culture.

First, meet the staff.

• Basil Fawlty (John Cleese) — the owner and proprietor, I’ll have you know, of Fawlty Towers. Basil dreams of running a prestigious hotel for a higher class of guest. Unfortunately, he appears to regard the guests themselves as the main obstacle to achieving this.
• Sybil Fawlty (Prunella Scales) — Basil’s formidable wife, whom he insults whenever she isn’t around and is terrified of whenever she is.
• Polly Sherman (Connie Booth) — waitress, maid, general assistant and frequently the only sane person in the building. Much of her working day appears to consist of trying to rescue Basil from situations he created himself.
• Manuel (Andrew Sachs) — the well-meaning waiter from Barcelona whose limited English frequently causes confusion and makes him the unfortunate recipient of Basil’s temper.

Every episode has something worth remembering. There are fraudulent aristocrats, dodgy builders, hotel inspectors, drunken chefs, demanding Americans, wedding anniversaries, dead guests and a Siberian hamster that is very definitely a rat.

But this is The Reluctant Patient, so perhaps we should concentrate on the medical bits.

Communication Problems

Mrs Richards arrives at Fawlty Towers.

She’s bad-tempered, demanding and hard of hearing.

Basil has finally met his match.

Mrs Richards has a hearing aid but doesn’t keep it switched on because it wears the battery out. This causes the obvious difficulty that she can’t hear Basil telling her to switch it on.

So he writes it down.

Unfortunately, she can’t read what he’s written because she can’t find her glasses.

Basil tries to tell her that her glasses are on top of her head.

She can’t hear him.

He starts writing that down before remembering that she can’t read it without the glasses he’s trying to tell her are on her head.

Eventually Mrs Richards discovers them herself while looking in a mirror.

It’s difficult to decide whether this is a comedy sketch or a remarkably efficient demonstration of the importance of actually using the medical aids you’ve been given.

The Reluctant Patient will make no comment.

The Psychiatrist

Next we have Dr Abbott, a psychiatrist staying at the hotel with his wife, who is also a doctor.

Basil is initially delighted to have two doctors staying at Fawlty Towers.

Then he realises that one of them is watching him.

This does not improve Basil’s behaviour.

As Basil becomes increasingly obsessed with what the psychiatrist might be thinking about him, his behaviour provides Dr Abbott with progressively more material to think about.

By the end, the psychiatrist concludes that Basil could provide enough material for an entire conference.

There may be another lesson for The Reluctant Patient here.

If you don’t want a medical professional to find anything wrong with you, apparently the solution isn’t to behave increasingly strangely whenever one is nearby.

The Germans

Sybil is in hospital having treatment for an ingrowing toenail, leaving Basil in charge of the hotel.

This goes about as well as you would expect.

A fire drill ends with Basil suffering a head injury and being taken to hospital himself.

He is supposed to remain there.

Naturally, Basil decides that the medical professionals are being unnecessarily cautious, discharges himself and returns to work.

The Reluctant Patient is struggling to identify any flaws in this reasoning.

Unfortunately, Basil is concussed.

And there is a party of German guests arriving.

What could possibly go wrong?

Quite a lot, as it turns out.

The Kipper and the Corpse

A guest dies during the night.

This presents Basil with a customer-service problem for which even he is inadequately prepared.

Rather than allowing something as inconvenient as a dead body to disturb the other guests, Basil attempts to conceal it and get it out of the hotel.

There is, conveniently, a doctor staying at Fawlty Towers.

Unfortunately, Dr Price is becoming increasingly annoyed because nobody will bring him his sausages.

It’s probably worth remembering that even doctors need breakfast.

Basil the Rat

Finally, public health makes an appearance.

A health inspector visits Fawlty Towers and discovers enough hygiene violations to give Basil a very short period in which to put things right or face closure.

At precisely the wrong moment, Manuel’s pet Siberian hamster escapes.

There are two problems.

Firstly, it’s called Basil.

Secondly, it isn’t a Siberian hamster.

It’s a rat.

Basil responds in the calm, measured manner we’ve come to expect by putting rat poison everywhere and desperately trying to prevent the health inspector from discovering the additional resident.

Perhaps there is a serious public-health message buried somewhere in Basil the Rat.

But mostly there’s a rat in the biscuit tin.

Don’t mention the war

There are plenty of other memorable moments in Fawlty Towers. Basil attacking his car with a tree branch in Gourmet Night. His sudden transformation from contempt to grovelling when he believes a guest is a lord in A Touch of Class. His increasingly desperate attempts to identify hotel inspectors in The Hotel Inspectors.

But the medical episodes have something particularly familiar about them.

Don’t use your hearing aid because it’ll wear the battery out.

Don’t behave naturally because there’s a psychiatrist watching you.

Leave hospital because you know perfectly well that you’re fine.

Try to deal with the problem yourself rather than calling someone qualified.

The Reluctant Patient would like to make it absolutely clear that these are terrible examples of how to look after your health.

Although he can see where Basil is coming from.

From the Case Files