John Cleese to “kill off” Sybil Fawlty

Spoiler:

John Cleese plans to kill off the character of Sybil Fawlty in the sequel to Fawlty Towers. he is creating with daughter, Camilla.

The new series is set in an upmarket boutique Caribbean hotel run by Basil Fawlty’s daughter.

Explaining that the new character was an illegitimate child, born from Basil’s illicit affair with a hotel guest, he told The Sun: “Sybil dies and Basil goes to see his daughter because it was all part of a naughty affair that he once had with a guest at the hotel.”

The 83-year-old added that the new series would start with a mistyped text message, saying: “The new one starts with Sybil’s death and Basil’s daughter getting a text message from her father saying, ‘Sybil did’.

“She texts back, ‘Sybil did what?'”

He added: “Basil is about to deliver the eulogy and says what an absolutely wonderful woman Sybil was. And then the camera pans around and you see that behind his back he has his fingers crossed.”

Prunella Scales, who played Sybil in the original series, is now aged 90 and now living with Alzheimers.

Connie Booth, who co-created the series, has told press she’d “have appreciated learning about the project from John rather than reading about it in the papers” and added that since a previous American adaptation (1999’s Payne) had been a failure, she “was surprised that another was being planned”.