‘Fawlty Towers’ — his personal cross

Press, 27 February 1986, Page 11

‘Fawlty Towers’ — his personal cross

John Cleese, who will appear on “The South Bank Show” tomorrow evening, stiU thinks he is about as funny as the average bank manager. He talks to Duo writer

JAMES GREEN.

John Cleese, a towering master of rage, hatred, anger, verbal and physical abuse, met his comeuppance when he asked an American TV executive how his “Fawlty Towers” scripts were doing over there.

All that noted Basil bombast disappeared and it was a full minute before he trusted himself to speak.

The Americans bought the scripts in order to make their own version. “We’ve had to make a slight change,” Cleese was told. "We’ve taken Basil out of the show completely.” He was convinced it was a joke until the man went on: “A woman named Amanda runs the hotel and we’ve mixed together the Basil and Sybil lines and given them to her. Oh, and not wanting to offend any ethnic groups we’ve made Manuel an Albanian. Then there is less chance of a protest.” Cleese, described by Mrs Fawlty as an ageing brilliantined stick insect, thinks that reply to be funnier than anything he

put into the series. , Undoubtedly his childhood and public school upbringing have helped make him one of the funniest men in Britain. Cleese says that writing and performing in such a smash hit as “Fawlty Towers” is his personal cross.

He is worried that in creating Basil and company he has peaked in his forties , and faces an impossible task in trying to better that with any new show.

For consolation, though, as a result of long sessions of psychotherapy, he now understands himself better and has lost his Puritan compulsion to work.

His other concern is a feeling that as himself he is “about as funny as the average bank manager.” Peter Sellers and Tony Hancock had the "same anxiety.

“I can talk about psychiatry, psychology, religion, history, and politics,” he says glumly. “But that isn’t what others want I’m expected to make them laugh.” With the top psychotherapist Robin Skynner he has written the book “Families And How To Survive Them” which has sold 100,000 copies in two years.

They are collaborating on a follow-up along similar lines.

“I grew up in Weston-Super-Mare and in many ways my mother was the more powerful of my parents. I was closer to her.”

His father, Reg Cheese, sold insurance and changed the name to Cleese to avoid ridicule when he went into the army. “We were lower middle class,” he explains. “In that background there is

pressure to cqnform and not to shock. It gave me a work ethic and my emotions were repressed. “In my comedy I tend to escape from that, and it has given me my targets. I was six feet tall at 12 and at that height you cannot fade into the background. “I am meek, indecisive and I was bullied. I came out of college unequipped to deal with ordinary life.

“I have been bored most of my life. At Cambridge, where I read law, women then as far as I was concerned were on another planet. I’m not at ease with sexual jokes or innuendo.

“I find abuse and anger funny ... the seven deadly sins are also funny because they are forms of egotism.”

Research has shown him that Manuel (who changed from Spanish to

Italian when the series was screened in Spain) is the most favourite character. That is because he has no control over his own life.

The least liked is Sybil because she is the most in control.

"Seeing helplessness makes us feel good, but if people can look after themselves then we don’t like them.” /

And Basil? “This poor monster has no control so they feel sympathy for him.”

Cleese finds politicians’ behaviour hilarious. On the British Prime Minis-

ter, Mrs Thatcher’s altered television interview image: “That per- ! formance of hers has got nothing to do with a live human being at all. She’s told to take a few deep breaths, talk slower, and put her head to one side. “I get more laughs from that than comedy shows.” So if creating Basil’s successor is a daunting 'thought pushed from his mind, how does he see the • future? . “I play another establishment figure, a headmaster, in the film ‘Clockwise,’ and I’m an English sheriff in a western called ‘Silverado.’ “I’m writing a film script and I.T.V. are dis-' cussing an idea based on the ‘Families’ book. Just as long as I don’t get involved in a new sit-com series ...” DUO Copyright