Fawlty Towers Perfect 10: In seventh place is Gourmet Night
“Can I help, Basil?”
“Yes, go and kill yourself.”
Voted the seventh most popular Fawlty Towers episode by our small but perfectly formed coven of co-operation smidgens, this is the one with the duck, the car thrashing, and the gay Greek chef who hits on the little Iberian waiter in a small family-run hotel. Is it any wonder your very own Steve Pafford was nominated to review this one then?
By this story — the penultimate episode of the first series — viewers are painfully aware that Fawlty Towers is in no danger of being an efficiently run establishment. Its married owners are either high-functioning sociopaths or hopelessly lazy, and sometimes both. Oh, and the solitary steward doesn’t understand the instructions he’s given, and the glorified waitress — so often the calm in the storm — takes great exception to “impersonating members of your family.” Funny, that.
Yet somehow the hotel from hell muddles through with just enough bookings to support itself and even keep on a trio of residential regulars. (Granted, regulars who are benignly semi-senile, but regulars nonetheless.) But is that enough to encourage Basil and Sybil to laugh at the same time? Oh, now!
Interestingly, the opening scenes of Gourmet Night give the impression everything seems to be innocuously adequate for once in the world of the Fawltys. Their local restaurateur chum André, has helped install a new chef in the kitchen, the only time a kitchen person is seen until the arrival of Terry Hughes throughout the second series.
The culinarian du jour is Kurt, a kindly rotunda who seems good at levelling out the hotel’s more chaotic elements. He’s a demonstratively affectionate friend to Manuel, buying one of Polly’s sketches (of the dago twit, natch), and even rustles up haute cuisine so divine that it mellows out Sybil enough to attempt a joke with Basil as opposed to simply bossing him around. Though the feeling’s far from mutual as he caustically suggests his “little piranha fish” should “open another vat of wine” to maintain the mood to which she seems accustomed.
However, Basil being Basil he’s not content with the status quo for long. He’s always harbouring grand ambitions, always seeking to raise its “tone.” Ergo, in his latest desperate effort to climb another rung on the social ladder of pretentiousness, Mr F tries to market Fawlty Towers as something more than it is. In other words, the toffee-nosed snoot arranges a gourmet night for VIPs.
Until the Very Important Poshies arrive he’s stuck dealing with the “proles”, in particular an obnoxious little chav called Ronald who appears to be dining with his parents, though the age gap is so vast they might as well be his great grandparents. Perhaps moisturiser had yet to reach Torquay in 1975.
Anyway, the tank-topped twit whinges that his chips are “the wrong shape” and describes the mayonnaise as “puke”. The only possible retort to a family of philistines used to salad cream freshly unscrewed from a bottle? “Well, at least it’s fresh puke!,” counters nice man Fawlty, before ‘accidentally’ smacking the brat on the head.
Things go rapidly downhill when the Fawlty’s Austin 1100 Countryman (WLG 142E, triv fans) goes on the blink. But that’s easily sorted — in Basil’s cheapskate mind at least — by telling Sybil he’s taking it to the garage and then fixing it himself round the corner. He’ll end up regretting such thriftiness.
Next, Manuel’s romantic rejection of Kurt upsets the chief cook and bottle opener so much that he drains the hotel’s wine cellar as the dignitaries are on their way. Being the mid 70s, Aunty Beeb neglected to show the awkward details of the spurned advance, with the exchanges taking place off-camera and Kurt reduced to a sobbing, vomiting mess.
During an airing of Gourmet Night while I still lived with my own much younger oldies, my mother recognised Steve Plytas, the portly plate filler who’d also been in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service — the Bond film released the year I was born — and Superman IV, which was partly shot at my school, commenting proudly, “he is actually really Greek, too.”
So was the older Steve a nominal influence on this gay half-greek ex-chef? I’d be surprised, seeing as my father came up with my name after rejecting Mother’s resolutely Orthodox suggestion of Dimitri because “he’d probably get bullied at school.” Oh, the irony.
Trying to find a way to discreetly communicate the news that poor Kurt is almost unconscious, Connie Booth is awkwardly brilliant as Polly takes — nay, snatches — Mrs Twitchen’s pink dressing gown that inexplicably doubles up as some sort of frock coat (“hideously thin with the added abomination of collar taxidermy” says my wife Nina), culminating in a succession of oven-ready euphemisms, hoping one will land.
“He’s potted… the shrimps! He’s soused… the herrings! He’s pickled the onions and he’s smashed eggs in his cups… under the taaaa-blllle!”
A sobering moment of seriousness: we’re led to believe that the portrayal of Kurt as a gay character did little for LGBT representation, and just reinforced a common trope that we’re all doomed to heartbreak and self-destruction. I can tell you I’ve never met a single soul who had a problem with it. On the contrary, our Hellenic homo is a talented cuisinier who comes across as a kindly, generous man who gets on with everyone. It just happens to be that he likes men and food (gosh, that sounds familiar), and, it’s fair to say, is something of an emotional drinker when things go tits up. I mean, who hasn’t been there?
Manuel mentions Kurt wanted “cuddles” and tried to kiss him in the cellar, but the inference is he’s craving affection and connection rather than being an inveterate sexual predator. There isn’t one casual homophobic slur that you’d typically find in the era’s other sitcoms such as Till Death Us Do Part or It Ain’t Half Hot Mum either. The nearest we get is when Basil learns Kurt is gay and Greek, he can’t help but setup a quick gag:
“I never should have hired a Frenchman.”
“He’s Greek, Mr Fawlty.”
“Well that’s even worse, they invented it.”
And apparently we did, among many other remarkable inventions the modern world now takes for granted. But seeing as both definers are rather close to the bone with this author, am I offended? Not remotely. If anything, that quip is a harbinger of Rejecting racism accusations, John Cleese’s current assertion is that he’s a “culturalist” ie “I believe that some cultures are better than others.” And, of course, so does Basil, like we’re ever allowed to forget it.
After André agrees to provide emergency dishes at short notice, our hot-headed hotelier rewrites the menu to three “extremely different” options: duck with orange, duck with cherries, and the pièce de résistance, of which a painfully enthusiastic Mrs Hall wishes she hasn’t asked:
“What’s duck surprise?”
“That’s duck without orange or cherries.”
Basil is forced to adopt the guise of the Galloping Gourmet as he makes a mad dash to André’s to pick up the salver of substitute food. Alas, when the car conks out (a frequent occurrence in 70s Britain, I can assure you), he rants and raves and decides to give it a “damn good thrashing.” This isn’t him although the location looks pretty spot on.
This is one of Fawlty Towers’ most memorable moments for good reason: every bit of frustration felt toward Kurt, Sybil, the guests and even himself is manifested in the hysterically impotent thrashes of a limp tree branch.
Shot on location in the London Borough of Brent, this iconic scene takes place at the junction of Mentmore Close and Lapstone Gardens in Kenton, before the council placed a pesky bollard there to deter pesky fan re-creations, as if that was going to stop moi.
Anyway, it’s about eight miles from the BBC but, usefully, just round the corner from “André’s” in Preston Road (in real life it’s called Wings), and Northwick Park Hospital, where Zoe the car owner was born, and at which we’ll park our backsides in my next vital episode assessment.
At least she can’t say I didn’t take her to see India…
Sounding like 80s-Bond Roger Moore at his creakiest, a breathless Basil legs it back to the hotel on foot while the staffers improvise and try everything they can muster to distract the hungry guests: Manuel performs a flamenco with a badly played guitar, Polly sings I Can’t Say No from Oklahoma!, and Sybil’s found another vat of wine, which prompts endless interminable recollections about her working-class uncle Ted.
Brown ale, you say? I can hear Bubble saying “how common!” 20 years into the future and it’s not hard to see why.
Disaster averted, the cloche-covered silver salver is wheeled in with full self-satisfied ceremony. Mr F sharpens the knives in theatrical triumph and lifts the lid. Except he’d picked up the wrong tray at André’s and in place of the poultry sits a large, ostentatiously decorated trifle dressed up like a Bombe Surprise.
After the shock of the car abuse, this is a brilliantly muted denouement: Basil is numb with embarrassment but has zero energy to explode again, so all he can do is rummage desperately, his hands tearing into the trifle to see if maybe — just maybe — there’s a duck inside.
As with The Anniversary, the curtain falls before anything needs to be resolved, because there’s nothing else the great Basil Fawlty can say at this juncture, other than “duck’s off, sorry.”
Steve Pafford
