John Cleese, 84, reflects on ‘literal-minded’ people at Fawlty Towers play

It’s 10:30 am, and I’m one row from the front of the Apollo Theatre on London’s Shaftesbury Avenue. To my right, in a royal box shared with a couple of inconspicuous-looking cameramen, sits John Cleese.

The comedy giant is here for the media launch of his new Fawlty Towers play, and will soon be answering questions from host Johnny Vaughn. Before that, though, the cast of the production have the nerve-wracking challenge of performing two scenes from the show, in front of the very man who first brought Basil Fawlty to life almost 50 years ago.If nerves are bubbling under the surface, they don’t show. Adam-Jackson Smith makes a brilliant Basil, all repressed stress and hopping frustration.

The decision to include the Major won’t please everyone, and while Cleese stresses people are expected to “laugh at him, not with him”, the racial slurs from the original show have nevertheless been removed from the play.

When asked by a reporter why he decided to include these scenes in the play, Cleese is clear: “Every film I saw when I was young always seemed to be a war film, and Germans were always portrayed as Nazis”.By having Basil Fawlty make a fool of himself as a result of such prejudice, Cleese and his writing partner, co-star and former wife Connie Booth were mocking this attitude, disarming it in the process. Not everyone can see that, though, and it’s obvious this infuriates Cleese.

By literal-minded, he’s referring to those who feel that any art which features characters with bigoted views is therefore bigoted itself. As a comedy writer, he finds the implications of this deeply troubling.“Literal-minded people don’t understand metaphor, irony, or comic exaggeration”, he explains. “And that means if you take them seriously you get rid of a lot of comedy”. Judging by the glowing reception to the play, people haven’t lost their sense of humour just yet.

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