Is John Cleese right that the 'literal minded' have killed comedy?

The character of Basil Fawlty was drawn from Cleese's family background

The first questioner asked about the practical challenges of turning 12 sitcom episodes into a two-hour comedy. 'It's what I call carpentry, do you see what I mean?' said Cleese in his faintly testy manner, like an impatient classics master. He said he was inspired to write farce after seeing Albert Finney in 'A Flea In Your Ear' by Georges Feydeau at the Old Vic. 'I was in the 1960s. I can't remember which year. I've never laughed as much in my life. I fell in love with farce.'

He said that farce works better in the theatre than on TV or in a movie-house. 'Once you're on film there's a guy called an editor who makes the choice about where you're looking, do you see what I mean?'

Cleese also raised another challenge of creating comedy: the 'literal-minded'. These people, he said, 'don't understand irony, don't understand metaphor and don't understand exaggeration. And that means if you take them seriously you get rid of a lot of comedy. Literal-minded people can only have one interpretation of what is being said.'

As a result, he claimed, comedy isn't what it used to be: Cleese bemoaned the fact that there were '30 rather funny comedies' on television in the early 1990s compared with 'one or two' now.

So can Fawlty Towers: The Play still make people laugh? The character of Basil Fawlty was drawn from Cleese's family background. 'Basil exemplifies a certain kind of lower-middle class figure, like the people I grew up with in Weston-super-Mare, who think it's a terrible loss of face to lose your temper…but being angry isn't funny. Repressing anger is funny.' 

Cleese seemed very conscious of the show's iconic status and he was able to quote from memory the BBC's initial script report: 'This is full of stereotypical characters and cliched situations. And I cannot see it being anything other than a total disaster.' 

Updating the script caused him no pain. 'The Major used a couple of words you can't use now, racial slurs…so we took those out.' His warnings against woke mentality were rather anodyne and he declined to use the term 'woke' at all. He talked of 'literal-minded people who don't understand irony or comic exaggeration…if you take them seriously you get rid of comedy.' 

He lamented the demise of TV comedy shows but he was unable to explain it. 'I'm not sure people can name more than one or two comedies nowadays. Why is that?…There's been too much change. What stresses people is change. And everyone is getting very anxious and they behave in a more ratty kind of way. And they're more literal-minded.' When pressed for a solution, he said, 'uninvent the internet.' 

His abiding memory of playing Basil was the physical stress

His abiding memory of playing Basil was the physical stress. 'Every muscle in your body is tight all the time.' At this point he turned to Adam Jackson-Smith who plays Basil on stage. 

'You have to make it more and more your part. And that will happen. You've got so much stage business to get right, so you're going to start off a bit anxious.'

Cleese directed the show alongside Caroline Jay Ranger and he used the press conference to offer the cast a few tips about playing comedy: 'The audience becomes part of it. You've got to go in front of an audience a lot of times before you get the timing exactly right. It's going to be tremendous. But I think it's going to be tremendous in June.' 

Manuel is played by Hemi Yeroham who admitted that Fawlty Towers was new to him: 'I was born and raised in Istanbul so I was unfamiliar with it. I approached it fresh. I didn't have to worry about fitting into something. I just did the script. And then I watched the show and the lovability comes from Andrew Sachs. He's just a loveable man.' 

He was asked how he makes Manuel annoying: 'I don't think Manuel is annoying,' he said, 'I think Basil is annoying.' 

The cast includes only one bona fide West End star, Paul Nicholas, who plays the Major. Now 79, Nicholas took the lead in the original London production of Jesus Christ, Superstar. How does he feel about playing the Major? 

'I'm at that stage of my life where Peter Pan is no longer an option,' he said.