See more Daily Mail on Google - save us as a Preferred SourceBy CHRISTOPHER STEVENS, TV CRITIC Published: 00:23 BST, 12 August 2026 | Updated: 00:42 BST, 12 August 2026
Joe And David's Magical Sitcom Tour (U&Gold) Rating: Four out of five stars Fawlty Towers, regularly voted the best sitcom in telly history, ran for just two short series, a total of 12 episodes. But now John Cleese has revealed he wanted to make one more instalment — as a movie.The 86-year-old comedian, chatting via video link from a hotel room in Bangkok on Joe And David's Magical Sitcom Tour, outlined the plot. On a package holiday to Spain, Basil's plane is hijacked. Frustrated and enraged, he tackles the hijackers and becomes the hero of the hour... until the pilot announces he's turning back to Heathrow.So Basil hijacks the plane himself. He forces the pilot to fly to the Med, and spends his entire holiday in a Spanish jail.It's a neat idea, and Cleese recounted it with glee. I'd love to know whether he ever talked about it with Prunella Scales — perhaps Basil and Sybil would be on their way to Barcelona with Manuel, the waiter played by Andrew Sachs. The comedy wouldn't work without them.That said, cinema versions of sitcoms rarely work. Even the most ardent fans of Are You Being Served? will wince to remember the 1977 film, when the staff of Grace Brothers booked a break on the 'Costa Plonka' and got caught up in a second Spanish Civil War — a storyline so xenophobic, it makes ITV sitcom Benidorm look woke.Ardent is just the word for The Celebrity Traitor's Joe Wilkinson and his pal David Earl, two chaps who've reached the age when nostalgia becomes a full-time job (and yes, I know I'm guilty).The duo were celebrating Fawlty Towers by visiting every location that evokes its memory, starting with Studio TC1 at the old BBC Television Centre in White City, west London, where several episodes were filmed in front of a live audience. Comedians David Earl (left) and Joe Wilkinson (right) star in Joe and David's Magical Sitcom Tour on U&GoldThey began marking out the floor plan of the hotel, until a studio hand stuck his head round the door and suggested, in as many words, that they needed to clear off because The Great British Bake Off was due to film there later. Shoulder pads of the night Rob Rinder, donning a heavy woollen toga with the aid of Ruth Goodman on The Romans (C5), practised his strut and mused, 'It's like a power suit really. Think of a Roman Margaret Thatcher.' But surely her Ancient World counterpart was Boadicea. This puzzled me, since Bake Off is filmed in a marquee. But apparently the spin-off, An Extra Slice, is indeed recorded at TC1. You learn something new, etc.The boys had a lovely time, visiting Torquay to see the site of the old Gleneagles hotel that inspired Cleese to dream up the show. They even parked a Mini on the corner of the very cul-de-sac where Basil broke down in every sense, in the Gourmet Night episode. And of course they thrashed the car with a tree branch.Last week they did Porridge, and next week it's The Office. This is gentle, nerdy television for blokes who want an excuse to be kids again.David said his dad, according to family legend, once laughed at Fawlty Towers so hard, he fell off the sofa. 'Love to have seen that,' he mused
