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The Fawlty Towers Basil Fawlty Supercut (video)

Xeni Jardin at 9:36 am Thu, Aug 23, 2012

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[Video link]. So many of John Cleese's greatest Basil-isms from the BBC series "Fawlty Towers" were completely non-verbal, or consisted of a single word or grunt.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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  • http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

    How appropriate that this should appear here on Thursday. On all the other nights we’ll just have a big trough of baked beans and garnish it with a couple of dead dogs.

    • altaylor

       Plus a side order of amphibious-landing-craft-shaped chips.

  • jwgl23

    This exactly why I could never get through more than the first episode of Fawlty Towers, because Basil is such a dick and it is inscrutiating to watch.

    • http://www.youtube.com/user/ziccup akbar56

      Basil was indeed a dick and his persona was excruciating to watch, but wasn’t that the point?

    • http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby

      That’s the premise.  Like the Office.

      • jwgl23

        I know.  And I can’t watch the Office either.

    • mexican cheese

      It is inscrutiating to read the t**t that people write about something they do not like. If you do not like something, do not participate in it. If you do like something than be effusive. The fact that you have a keyboard does not give you the right to rain on other’s parades.

      • https://launchpad.net/~googoleyes koanhead

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_g3kkGH8Mo

  • altaylor

    Aw, you missed ending it with Basil thrashing the car with a branch!

  • Donald Simmons

    Don’t mention the war!

    • http://twitter.com/lucyrickyalex Chris Schumacher

      *klaxons*

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3YyZr6El3M 

  • http://halfbakedmaker.org Robert Baruch

    Sybil: Perhaps it would be simplest to have [Manuel's rat] put to S-L-E-E-P

    Manuel: SPLEEP?!

  • xiagang

    I think I could place just every single one of those Basil-isms. Perfect. 

  • cajjnk

    “Cloth-eared bint” is one of my favorite phrases of all time.  I never knew what it meant until the Internet came along.  It sounds really bad, but it’s actually just a vaguely pejorative phrase meaning “inattentive girl.”  I suppose the male form would be “cloth-eared yob.”

    Never got to use either one of them in real life so far, but some day. . . .

  • toobigtofail

     That’s right, just smiley faces here. No criticisms, please. What do you think this is, the internet?