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The dark truth behind the Fawlty Towers hotel has been revealed-Josie Copson-Entertainment – Metro
A little different to the fictional version.
![The dark truth behind the Fawlty Towers hotel has been revealed-Josie Copson-Entertainment – Metro](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/IP_2568041-ff08.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1024)
The real Fawlty Towers was a little different (Picture: BBC Archives)
The Fawlty Towers filming location was used for ‘gambling, illicit encounters and crime,’ claims the show’s floor manager.
While we know it as the dysfunctional hotel in Devon’s Torquay run by the chaotic Basil Fawlty (John Cleese), Tony Guyan has spoken about the real location.
For exterior shots, the Wooburn Grange Country Club in Bourne’s End, which is situated in Buckinghamshire was used.
The venue, which burnt down in 1991, was a little different to what may have been suitable for the sitcom.
Guyan began by describing it as a ‘weird place’ where you could ‘rent rooms by the hour’.
‘It was basically a club where you could gamble, hire a room, and take your ”secretary” there for an afternoon,’ he explained on the podcast Chatabix.
John Cleese played Basil Fawlty (Picture: Alamy Stock Photo)
While chatting to hosts David Earl and Joe Wilkinson, he also claimed that a man arrived in a Jaguar when another man ‘stepped out of the bushes with a sawn-off shotgun and blew his head off’.
‘He was a hitman hired to top someone, but they found out he’d killed the wrong guy,’ he added.
Guyan, who has been doing his job for 60 years, also claims that they once found a boardroom table piled ‘3ft high with 50s, 20s, 10s, five and 10 shilling notes’.
‘I stood with my back hard against the wall because I didn’t want him to think I’d taken a couple of handfuls,’ he stated. ‘It was well dodgy.’
The venue was used for exterior shots (Picture: BBC Archive)
One of his colleagues benefited from the venue when they picked up a gambling chip worth £10,000 and was told to keep it.
Decades after the series finished in 1979, Guyan is still working with John – most recently on GB News’ The Dinosaur Hour, where he hosted intimate chats with whoever he wanted in a twelfth-century castle.
Fawlty Towers could return (Picture : Shutterstock)
Last year it was also reported that the 84-year-old actor was writing a script for a potential new series of the sitcom with his daughter Camilla Cleese.
The reboot would follow Basil in discovering he has a secret daughter and having to find his place in a modern world that is ever-changing.
He plans to start the sequel with the death of a loved character – Sybil Fawlty, who was played by Prunella Scales.
‘The new one starts with Sybil’s death and Basil’s daughter getting a text message from her father saying, “Sybil did,”‘ he said to The Sun.
‘She texts back, “Sybil did what?” Basil is about to deliver the eulogy and says what an absolutely wonderful woman Sybil was.’
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