John Cleese reveals secrets to Fawlty Towers' success

5 December 2025, 10:08

The Monty Python star joined Smooth Radio to celebrate the famous sitcom’s continued popularity.

John Cleese has shared an insight into what he believes led Fawlty Towers’ to huge success.

The A-list comedian recently joined Smooth Radio’s Paul Phear to celebrate the sitcom’s recent 50th anniversary and his best-selling book about the series, Fawlty Towers: Fawlts and All.

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Cleese co-created, wrote and starred in the comedy about snobby hotel manager Basil Fawlty and his hapless staff with his then-wife Connie Booth, who played the hotel’s general assistant, Polly.

Watch Paul and John's full interview here:

The secret behind Fawlty Towers’ success, according to John Cleese

And as he explained in his recent interview with Paul, it was the "six weeks” he and Connie put into perfecting each episode’s script before production which he believes was the secret to the show’s success.

“That’s the key to [good comedy],” Cleese said. “If somebody says: ‘What was the secret?’ The answer is to spend a lot of time on it.”

In order to perform every page of their scripts within each of the show’s 12 episodes’ 30 minutes of screentime, another key factor in the show’s success was ensuring the cast didn’t delay things by stopping for laughs along the way.

Ploughing on

Despite being filmed in front of a live studio audience, Cleese explained how the actors had to resist the temptation to pause whenever the script got a laugh, as one would if performing in a play.

“Knowing that the people at home are going to be able to hear anyway, that enables you to play it much faster than you would normally without waiting for the laughs,” Cleese shared.

"Fix Me A Waldorf Salad" | Fawlty Towers

“When people came on the show, I said: ‘This is going to be sort of counterintuitive. But I want you not to wait for the laughs.

“‘I want you to just keep ploughing through.’ And that's why we were able to get through 140 pages in the show.”

Of course, this is not to suggest Cleese and the rest of the cast and creative team were ignoring the audience at any point in the production.

A wealth of talent

Another key to the show’s success was how much time Cleese and Booth put into considering the audience at every stage of the process.

“Comedy is much more complicated than drama... comedy's much harder,” Cleese said. “When you’re doing a drama, then you don’t have to take the audience into account [as much]... but they’re central to every performance [in comedy].”

Even with all this work in place, Fawlty Towers’ still wouldn’t have been a success if it hadn't boasted such all-star cast.

Speaking with Paul, Cleese heaped praise on the “wealth of talent” the show featured, from his fellow lead stars, the “wonderful” Prunella Scales and “marvellous” Andrew Sachs, to names like Bernard Cribbins, Geoffrey Palmer and Joan Sanderson who took on guest roles.

“We used to record the show on a Sunday so that people who were in the West End would [be available],” Cleese explained, revealing another of the production’s secrets.

Power of comedy

Reflecting on Prunella Scales’ recent passing, the 86-year-old reacted to the news that the actress (who had dementia) had been watching Fawlty Towers on the day that she died.

“Comedy is so much more important than people realise,” Cleese reflected.

“When I do Comic Cons – which I enjoy, because I make real contact with fans... the extraordinary thing is how many of them say to me: ‘Thank you for helping me through difficult times.’...

“When you hear that, you suddenly realise that comedy's more than just making people laugh.”

Fawlty Towers: Fawlts And All by John Cleese is available now. Fawlty Towers: The Play is currently touring the UK.