“It’s like coming home”: John Cleese returns to Torquay - and a night that meant more than just a show

I didn’t grow up with Fawlty Towers.

For me, it was something my grandad loved. Something he quoted. Something he insisted was “the funniest thing ever made”. So when I walked into the Princess Theatre in Torquay on opening night, I wasn’t expecting to laugh as much as I did. But within minutes, I was.

Not just smiling politely, properly laughing. The kind of laughter that spreads across a room, that builds, that you can’t quite hold in. And looking around, I realised I wasn’t alone.

This wasn’t just a room full of people reliving something from the past. It was a room full of people, young and old, all laughing at the same thing.

And at the centre of it all was John Cleese, back in Torquay for the first time in more than 50 years.

“Bringing Fawlty Towers to Torquay and being here myself today is just wonderful - it’s like coming home,” he said.

For someone who grew up in Torquay, there’s something quite surreal about that. This seaside town, often dismissed, often overlooked  is the reason one of Britain’s most iconic comedies exists at all.

Cleese spoke about coming here in the 1950s, spending long summers with a close friend, playing miniature golf. It sounded idyllic. But it was a later visit, in the 1970s, that would change everything.

While staying at the Gleneagles Hotel, Cleese encountered its notoriously rude owner, Donald Sinclair. Most of the Monty Python team left within a day. Cleese stayed.

“But I stayed on, thank God, as it gave me lots of ideas,” he said.

Those ideas became Fawlty Towers. Just 12 episodes, but enough to define British comedy for generations.

Now, 50 years on, it’s back where it began and this time as a stage show.

The production merges three classic episodes into a two-hour play, and it works. The farce is fast-paced, the misunderstandings pile up, and the humour; absurd, sarcastic, unapologetic still lands.

At times, you can feel the challenge of translating something so iconic from screen to stage. Some moments don’t quite hit the heights they could. But then others do and when they do, the whole theatre feels it.

The man tasked with stepping into Cleese’s shoes is Danny Bayne, who plays Basil Fawlty.

“When I first got the role, I knew I had massive shoes to fill,” he told me earlier that day.

“But John didn’t want a copy. He just said, "find your way with it.”

There are moments where Danny is uncannily close to Cleese, the voice, the movements, the physical comedy. But live theatre brings something different. Things go wrong. Props disappear. Doors fall off.

“The other day the door came off the hinges,” he laughed. “The audience wouldn’t know but for us, it keeps it fresh.”

That unpredictability is part of what makes it work.

For Mia Austen, who plays Sybil, being in Torquay adds another layer entirely.

“It feels like it’s been leading up to this,” she said. “We’re doing Fawlty Towers and we’re in Torquay. It's a massive pinch me moment.”

She’d never been before. Arriving in the sunshine, she described it as “like the Riviera”,  a version of the town that, for a moment, matched the idea of it.

And that’s the thing about Fawlty Towers. It’s rooted in reality, in seaside holidays, in hotel life, in awkward British interactions but it exaggerates it just enough to make it unforgettable.

Sitting in the audience, I realised something else too: my grandad had been right all along.

Next to me, he was laughing just as much as he probably had decades ago. And a few rows away, 60-year-old Ali McPhee summed it up perfectly: “It’s timeless and ageless.”

Before the show, I had the chance to meet John Cleese and I introduced myself: “Gabriella Mitchell, reporter for the Torbay Weekly.”

He looked at me, paused, and said: “Oh, I'm so sorry.”

His response was quick. Dry. Completely deadpan. And exactly what you’d expect; perfectly captured in the images below. 

His humour, even off stage, felt so unmistakably Basil-like.

At one point, a PR manager tried to move him along. He had places to be, people to see. But John wasn’t finished chatting. 

“Excuse me,” he said, turning back, “I’m talking to a man who remembers Monty Python.”

That man was my grandad.

At that moment, it didn’t feel like a press line or a publicity stop. It felt like a conversation. A connection between generations, the people who grew up with his work, and those discovering it now.

My grandad joked: “You haven’t missed much since you were last here in 1974.”

John laughed.

Then, with that same dry wit, he added that if aviation fuel prices keep rising, perhaps more people will start holidaying in Torbay again.

It was a throwaway comment. But it stuck with me.

Because for one night, Torquay didn’t feel overlooked, it felt important and like the centre of something.

And as I left the theatre, still hearing people quoting lines, still seeing people laughing,  I realised something my grandad had known all along:

Some comedies don't date.

Some comedy doesn’t fade.

And 50 years on, Fawlty Towers is still making people laugh whether you grew up with it, or you’re just discovering it for the first time.

All photos by Miraclepr.com