What did Basil Fawlty fail to avoid mentioning?Why did Sybil keep snagging her cardies?Where was Polly on the night of the great wedding anniversary disaster?And what is the Spanish word for “donkey”? The answer to all these questions can be found in this, the complete and unexpurgated scripts of Fawlty Towers—the most celebrated “Brit-com” of all time, and the show voted the top UK television series ever by the British Film Institute. The snobbish, manic Basil . . . his over-coiffeured, domineering wife Sybil . . . the hopeless but ever-hopeful waiter Manuel . . . the calm and capable Polly . . . and of course the steady stream of abused guests—all live again in the pages of The Complete Fawlty Towers. Gahan Wilson in the New York Times has called John Cleese “arguably one of the funniest people now living.” And as the reviewer for Britiain’s Literary Review put it, The Complete Fawlty Towers is “superbly well written. If you’re on a bus and can’t see Basil Fawlty thrashing his car with a large branch, it is some compensation to read it happening.” Or as one fan wrote on-line: “Yes, it’s all here, all the comedy, the frustration, the dead body, even the rat.” Welcome to FAWLTY TOWERS, the best loved bad hotel in the world.

John Cleese’s  huge comedic influence has stretched across generations; his sharp irreverent eye and the unique brand of physical comedy he perfected with Monty Python, on Fawlty Towers, and beyond now seem written into comedy’s DNA. In this rollicking memoir, So, Anyway…, Cleese takes readers on a Grand Tour of his ascent in the entertainment world, from his humble beginnings in a sleepy English town and his early comedic days at Cambridge University (with future Python partner Graham Chapman), to the founding of the landmark comedy troupe that would propel him to worldwide renown.Cleese was just days away from graduating Cambridge and setting off on a law career when he was visited by two BBC executives, who offered him a job writing comedy for radio. That fateful moment—and a near-simultaneous offer to take his university humor revue to London’s famed West End—propelled him down a different path, cutting his teeth writing for stars like David Frost and Peter Sellers, and eventually joining the five other Pythons to pioneer a new kind of comedy that prized invention, silliness, and absurdity. Along the way, he found his first true love with the actress Connie Booth and transformed himself from a reluctant performer to a world class actor and back again.Twisting and turning through surprising stories and hilarious digressions—with some brief pauses along the way that comprise a fascinating primer on what’s funny and why—this story of a young man’s journey to the pinnacle of comedy is a masterly performance by a master performer.