Freshly minted farce is funniest show in town

ADAPTING a much-loved television comedy series for the stage is a risky business.

- NEIL NORMAN

Theatre versions of Only Fools and Horses, Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em and Drop the Dead Donkey have met with varying degrees of success.

But when you take the greatest comedy series in British TV history you take your life in your hands.

John Cleese may be a controversial national treasure but his alter ego Basil Fawlty is, ironically, faultless.

Forty-five years after Fawlty Towers was first transmitted, Cleese has taken three of the 12 episodes he wrote with Connie Booth and threaded them together seamlessly.