“Fawlty Towers” Hotel Decides Not To Fight Its Reputation For Rudeness

You could spend a fortune countering the image.

Or you could use it as a reason for people to patronize you.

Welcome to the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay, England. The location is well known to fans of the classic TV show “Fawlty Towers” as the infamous inn that provided the inspiration for the John Cleese series.

The lodging, which is now a part of the Best Western chain, held a grand re-opening Monday night, and decided to embrace rather than fight the reason for its renown.

It’s a marketing strategy that could pay off, especially if fans of the old show decide they’d like to be able to say they stayed at the iconic address.

“Fawlty Towers” aired on British TV in the 1970s and featured Cleese as Basil Fawlty, the ill mannered proprietor of the worst hotel on the planet.

It soon spread its short-lived but incredible salute to horrible service and rudeness around the world.

So when the owners decided to relaunch Gleneagles, they knew there was no point in trying to play down the reputation, even though the place is now a state of the art, modern facility with excellent service. 

Instead, they embraced it as a marketing ploy.

“We decided Hotel Gleneagles is always going to be famous for inspiring ‘Fawlty Towers’ so, rather than being embarrassed about what has happened, we have chosen to capitalize on it,” reveals current co-owner Brian Shone.

“You cannot get rid of the spirit of Basil, so you have got to embrace him.”

Cleese was staying at the hotel with the rest of the Monty Python troupe in 1971 and termed then-owner Donald Sinclair as “the most wonderfully rude man I have ever met.” He used that experience to fashion what is seen as one of the funniest TV shows ever made.

But Sinclair’s widow contends the image isn’t exactly fair.

“They didn’t fit into a family hotel,” Beatrice Sinclair says of the Pythons. “They kept annoying my husband and were quite insulting.”

Cleese didn’t make the grand re-opening, but the woman who played Basil’s long suffering wife was in attendance. Guest of honour Prunella Scales arrived in a red Austin 1100 – the same car her TV husband beat with a tree branch in one of the episodes.

• The Gleneagles isn’t the building seen in the title shots of the show. That’s actually the Woodburn Grange Country Club near London, but fans won’t be able to visit that touchstone for themselves. It  burned down in 1991.