John Cleese didn’t tell ex-wife and co-creator Connie Booth about Fawlty Towers reboot

Fawlty Towers co-creator and star, Connie Booth said she wasn’t told that the show was getting a reboot.

The actress, who was Cleese’s wife at the time and created the series with him, revealed that she got the news by reading it “in the papers”.

She said: “I’d have appreciated learning about the project from John rather than reading about it in the papers.

“Because a previous American reboot of Fawlty Towers had failed some years ago, I was surprised that another was being planned.

“I was even more surprised to read that John intends to write and to perform in it together with his daughter Camilla,” the 82-year-old added to The Times.

The original series starred Booth as Polly, Cleese as hotel owner Basil Fawlty, Prunella Scales as Basil’s wife Sybil and the late Andrew Sachs as hotel employee, Manuel.

Cleese, who was married to Booth from 1968 to 1978, recently announced he would be rebooting the classic sitcom with his daughter, Camilla Cleese, brought on as co-writer to help "modernise" the show.

The Monty Python star, now a host on right-wing channel, GB News, is also currently working on the new series in collaboration with Spinal Tap filmmaker Rob Reiner.

He will be the only original cast member in the new series.

Fawlty Towers was named the greatest British sitcom of all time in a 2019 Radio Times poll.

The two-series show, which featured on BBC2 in 1975 and 1979, followed the fortunes of Torquay hotelier Basil and his wife Sybil as they tried to keep their business and marriage afloat.

However, after three failed US remakes, Cleese said in 2009 there would never be another episode.

“The problem is, when you do something that is generally accepted as being very good, a horrible problem arises, which is: how do you top it?” he said.

The “problem” seems to have been solved with the help of veteran director Reiner.

His American film and television production company Castle Rock Entertainment announced it had agreed a deal with Cleese to bring back the renowned series.

A short statement said it would “explore how Cleese’s over-the-top, cynical and misanthropic Basil Fawlty navigates the modern world”.