Andrew
Sachs, the much loved Fawlty Towers actor, dies aged 86
Hannah Furness, arts
correspondent
2 DECEMBER 2016 •
9:06AM
Andrew Sachs, the
actor who rose to fame in Fawlty Towers has died at the age of 86
after a four year battle with dementia.
The actor, best
known for playing hapless Spanish waiter Manuel in John Cleese's
sitcom, passed away in a care home last week, his wife has revealed.
Melody Sachs, who
cared for him in his final years, disclosed he had suffered vascular
dementia, losing his capacity to speak and write in later life.
She said: "He
had the best life, and the best death you could ever have."
Sachs won a place in
the nation's hearts for his role in Fawlty Towers, where he played a
clueless Spanish waiter who became the butt of John Cleese's jokes.
His catchphrase, "I
know nothing", and Basil Fawlty's dismissive "He's from
Barcelona" have gone down in British comedy history, with the
1970s sitcom regularly voted among the best-loved BBC programmes ever
made.
Despite his stellar
career, Sachs is remembered in recent years for being the innocent
victim of a BBC furore in which presenters prank called him.
In 2008, Jonathan
Ross and Russell Brand made an obscene calls to him in which they
joked about Brand sleeping with his granddaughter Georgina Baillie.
More than 500 people
protested to the BBC, which was forced to apologise to Sachs for
these "unacceptable and offensive" remarks.
In 2014, Sachs said
he remained "disgusted" by the incident, with his wife
telling the Daily Mail the episode had been "absolutely
horrific".
The newspaper last
night reported the actor had been battling dementia for the past four
years and died in a care home last week.
"My heart has
been broken every day for a long time," she said, adding that
the actor had remained positive to the end.
"I never once
heard him grumble. It wasn’t all doom and gloom; he still worked
for two years.
"We were happy,
we were always laughing, we never had a dull moment. He had dementia
for four years and we didn’t really notice it at first until the
memory started going.
"It didn’t
get really bad until quite near the end. I nursed Andrew, I was there
for every moment of it."
Mrs Sachs said her
husband had been diagnosed with vascular dementia in 2012. The
disease, the second most common form of Alzheimer's, in characterised
by the often sudden loss of language, speech and memory, along with
mood changes.
Mrs Sachs said the
actor only lost his capacity to speak in the last few weeks, after
suffering three bouts of pneumonia. He spent eight months in a care
home, in which his family would read to him and enjoy summer in the
garden.
"Don’t feel
sorry for me because I had the best life with him," Mrs Sachs
said last night. "I had the best husband and we really loved
each other.
"One thing
about Andrew is that I never once heard him grumble, I never found
him once without a smile on his face.
"We’re both
as daft as brushes, we were married for 57 years. We loved each other
very deeply and it was a pleasure looking after him. I miss him
terribly."
His co-star Cleese
paid tribute to him on Thursday night, saying: "Just heard about
Andy Sachs. Very sad.... I knew he was having problems with his
memory as his wife Melody told me a couple of years ago and I heard
very recently that he had been admitted to Denham Hall, but I had no
idea that his life was in danger.
"A very sweet
gentle and kind man and a truly great farceur. I first saw him in
Habeas Corpus on stage in 1973. I could not have found a better
Manuel. Inspired."
"If you meet
Andrew you would call him almost retiring, very quiet, almost
academic, studiously polite," he said. "Then suddenly he
clips on his moustache and something else in his personality just
slips in."
Cleese, 77, the
co-creator of the 1970s sitcom, told Radio 4's Today programme on
Friday he was in "a little bit of shock" by the news.
He said acting with
Sachs was "like playing tennis with someone who is exactly as
good as you are".
"Sometimes he
wins and sometimes you win but somehow there's a rapport and it comes
from the very deepest part of ourselves. You can work on it, but in
our case we never had to work on it, it all happened so easily."
Cleese added that
Sachs "turned into a completely different human being" when
wearing his familiar Manuel moustache.
Asked of his
favourite scene with Sachs in Fawlty Towers, Cleese told Today it had
been The Kipper and the Corpse - episode four of the second series of
the hit comedy.
"I think that
was some of our very best physical comedy and working out all that
stuff like getting the body into the basket and getting it out again
I think that was so much fun.
"Occasionally
you come across someone who loves physical comedy and although he was
such a quiet demeanour, Andy absolutely loved it. "He was
wonderful."
Cleese said he last
saw Sachs "eight or nine months ago" when they were being
photographed together.
He said he realised
then he "wasn't totally present" but added the news of his
death was "a little bit of a shock".
"Although I
knew his memory was not so good, despite that he was very special."
Born in 1930
Germany, Sachs fled the Nazis with his family in 1938 and eventually
settled in North London.
He married Melody,
who starred in one episode of Fawlty Towers herself, in 1960, going
on to have three children.
Beginning his acting
career on BBC radio, he went on to appear in The Saint, Randall and
Hopkirk and The History of Miss Polly, with guest appearance in
Casualty and Doctor Who.
He worked into his
80s, when he appeared in a live tour of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy and Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere.
The actor died on
November 23, the Daily Mail reported, with family and close friends
commemorating him in North London yesterday.
Blackadder actor and
comedian Sir Tony Robinson paid tribute to his "true friend".
He wrote on Twitter:
"So sad that Andrew Sachs has died. A true friend and a kindred
spirit. I still have the wonderful baby pictures he took of my
children. RIP."
Samuel West, whose
mother Prunella Scales starred alongside Sachs in Fawlty Towers,
added: "Creator of one of our most beloved EU migrants. Such
warmth and wit; impossible to think of him without smiling."
Comedy writer Edgar
Wright said Sachs "spun comic gold as Manuel in Fawlty Towers".
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