On Saturday, I met up with a couple of friends in London and, after a quick sniffter in a nearby hostlery, we dropped in to the Apollo Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue to see Fawlty Towers – The Play.

It was this: excellent.

The set was a faithful recreation of the original – as can be seen from the photo that I took, from our seats up in the Grand Circle – and the cast were brilliant.

John Cleese has taken three classic episodes from the nearly 50 year-old TV series (Mrs Richards, The Hotel Inspectors and The Germans) and merged them into a single 90 minute show.

And it works wonderfully!

It was evident from the cheers at certain points throughout the play, that much of the audience were – just like my mates and I – die-hard fans of the show and had likely seen every episode several times over, but there were many younger people in the audience too, who were possibly seeing it for the first time and they seemed to be enjoying it just as much as we were.

Catch it if you can… you won’t be disappointed.