CRAIG BROWN: How grumpy John Cleese slowly turned into Basil Fawlty

This was my first thought when John Cleese announced his plan to bring back Fawlty Towers, 44 years after the last episode was first transmitted. Someone — possibly Cleese himself — once said that in their youth every comedian plays the person they dread becoming Or perhaps the genius of Fawlty Towers springs from Cleese’s separation of his mother into two different characters, each in conflict with the other — on the one hand Basil, panicky and abusive, and on the other his wife Sybil, determined to present a manicured picture to the world. Or perhaps the genius of Fawlty Towers springs from Cleese’s separation of his mother into two different characters, each in conflict with the other — on the one hand Basil, panicky and abusive, and on the other his wife Sybil, determined to present a manicured picture to the world. Added Jones: ‘It was as though the more psychiatric help John sought, the less he needed to express himself with things like Fawlty Towers — if you like, the less he felt he needed to be funny.’ Some time between A Fish Called Wanda and Fierce Creatures, John Cleese lost his magic touch. His late friend and fellow Python Terry Jones once said that Cleese created Basil Fawlty as a way of coming to terms with himself In 1992 — midway between Wanda and Fierce Creatures —Cleese married a psychotherapist, Alyce Faye Eichelberger.