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Basil Fawlty, as created and performed by John Cleese, is the
rudest, most boorish, most hilariously obnoxious man on the face of the planet.
What a natural for a TV sitcom! His screen wife, Sybil (Prunella Scales), put it
best in the episode "The Psychiatrist": "You're either crawling all over them,
licking their boots, or spitting poison at them like some Benzedrine puff
adder." He mockingly replies, "Just trying to enjoy myself, dear." With his
gangly frame and contortionist abilities, Cleese brilliantly punctuates Basil's
outrageous faux pas with absurd gymnastics and turns Three Stooges-style pokes
and kicks into a slapstick ballet. Scales's Sybil is the genial but obliviously
chatty voice of reason and Andrew Sachs mangles the English language as the
Spanish bellhop Manuel, whose struggles with simple directions results in comic
lunacy reminiscent of Robert Benigni.
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