JOHN Cleese has apologised for rebooting ‘Fawlty Towers’.
The Monty Python star insists he had “no idea” bringing back the classic 70s sitcom, with his daughter Camilla Cleese, 39, would cause such “anger and distress”.
The 83-year-old comedian wrote on Twitter: “I must apologise. I had no idea that the idea of writing a new sitcom with my daughter would cause so much anger and distress.
“I truly mean no harm. Naively I thought it would be fun.
“But I feel terrible about having released this tide of negative emotion. Please forgive me”.
The iconic sitcom spanned 12 episodes over two series from 1975 to 1979 on the BBC, with John starring as hotel owner Basil Fawlty.
Recently, John has hinted he may set the rebooted show on a Caribbean island rather than the Devon seaside town of Torquay.
He said: “When I look at old clips now all these wonderful English character actors aren’t with us anymore, so suddenly we thought that if the only continuing character is Basil, then we can come up with something surprising.
“Then we thought, ‘Where?’ Not in a small English town, but somewhere more fun and much more different – say a Caribbean island or something like that with a small bijou hotel with a few rich people coming to stay!”
The ‘A Fish Called Wanda’ star has also ruled out creating the Rob Reiner-supported reimagining of the show with the BBC, due to a lack of “freedom”.
John said: “I’m not doing it with the BBC because I won’t get the freedom. I was terribly lucky before, because I was working for the BBC in the late 60s, 70s, and the beginning of the 80s.
“That was the best time because the BBC was run by people with real personalities who loved the medium and who were operating out of confidence, which was okay because there wasn’t so much competition.”
