2 weeks Ago By Chloe Govan
Despite spending almost a year on writing, filming, and performing for the first series of Fawlty Towers, John Cleese complained later that his fee was so tiny, he was forced to seek work elsewhere to pay the bills. The 69-year-old Monty Python star grumbled that he'd been given just £6,000 for toiling away on the BBC show. While he and co-writer Connie Booth went on to enjoy huge success, with John netting millions of pounds before moving to California, he hadn't always been quite so fortunate.
John made the admission that during that 43-week stint on the 12-episode series, he had to subsidise his income by appearing in TV commercials. "I have to thank the advertising industry for making this possible," he joked at a documentary launch, as reported by the Sydney Morning Herald . With rare candour, he added: "Connie and I used to spend six weeks writing each episode and we didn't make a lot of money out of it.
It took six weeks to make each show, so that's 36 weeks, one week to film them - 37 weeks - and six weeks to actually tape them in the studio so that's 43 weeks' work." He also clashed with BBC exec Jimmy Gilbert, who'd argued that the script was full of "clichés" and "stereotypical characters". He recalled Jimmy arguing that he could not see the show "being anything other than a disaster", as he poured cold water over John's ambitions of making it a success.
He was urged to get the characters out and about to keep audiences engaged, with Jimmy declaring: "John, you can't do the whole thing in the hotel." However, John retorted: "Of course, it's in the hotel that the whole pressure cooker builds up." At the time of his comments, back in 2009, the Monty Python star also argued that modern writers were not working as hard as they had during the 1970s, when he'd toiled away over the Fawlty Towers scripts - and that as a consequence, shows weren't "as good as they used to be".
He candidly continued: "I do proudly say that in the '60s, '70s and '80s we did have the least bad television in the world, and that's quite a claim. I think the main problem now is it's run on the basis of money." When Fawlty Towers first aired, it reportedly received only modest promotion by BBC Two and its first episode on the channel in 1975 was widely considered a flop.
Despite initially drawing in just a quarter of the number of viewers who watched the news on the same channel, it found its feet as a cult classic soon afterwards when the series was repeated on BBC One. It is now hugely popular even four decades later - and John, who loathes cancel culture and censorship, has vowed never to tone down any of the aspects that earnt the show its fame. He declared to Radio Times: "We'd never try to update Fawlty Towers," arguing that the younger generation "probably won't understand it" if they watch, but will soon "pick it up".
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