one of the most enduring, and indeed endearing, myths of modern British society is the existence of a 13th episode of the celebrated TV show Fawlty Towers. and let me make something clear at the start, look you see. absolutely no evidence exists which says that this is so. if you have come to this post via one of them Google things hoping to find it, no.
instead, then, this is a post looking at the myth. whilst it won't be an extensive, definitive or exhaustive look, it will i trust be of interest to fans of this show, or those who, like me, keep hearing all about this bizarrely legendary episode. or, indeed, episodes, as we shall see.
to start with, the "facts". only two series of Fawlty Towers were made, with each featuring six episodes. six priceless, wonderful episodes of comedy gold. the first series was broadcast for the first time in 1975, with the second and final being broadcast in 1979. an important thing to note is that the screening of the second was disjointed, with the final episode being shown several months after the first five. this was down to virtually every aspect of British life being affected by industrial action here, there and everywhere.
exactly where did the idea of a 13th episode existing come from? quite possibly the creators of the whole thing. when John Cleese and Connie Booth announced the second series it is reported that they said they'd written "several" scripts. perhaps this all started by the more literal members of the world taking "several" to mean "exactly seven".
as we will get to, there are people out there who claim to have "seen" this thirteenth episode. so, then, surely we know what the plot or premise of it must be or must have been? yes. and no. different accounts speak of entirely different episodes. should all of these incidents of people seeing a "never screened" episode of Fawlty Towers be accurate, then as point of fact there is one half of an entire series sat unshown to us, the simple public.
the most popular three, with my comments, are -
The Robbers - as in a robbery takes place at the hotel, and the episode is all the comical farce which could surround it. plausible, but i am not certain that Mr Cleese and Ms Booth would have written an episode bearing similarity to an earlier one, in this instance that one with the confidence trickster.
The Blackout - a topical episode, where the entire thing happens mostly with just voices over a black screen. if this existed, it would have been a sharp and timely comment or "dig" on the power cuts (and cuts to everything else) that affected Britain in the late 70s due to rampant industrial action. all episodes were, however, written quite some time before such things became part of life.
The Demolition - which would be the episode to end it all, with the plot being that the hotel was demolished. not much room for comedy, you would think, and interestingly this only got mooted as the 13th episode around the time of the "real" hotel actually being demolished, i think in the late 90s or at some stage in the 2000s
what of those who "swear down" or in other ways with "no word of a lie" claim to have, honest, seen this 13th episode of Fawlty Towers, irrespective of which of the three? invariably it is always at the house of a friend, who had a friend that worked for the BBC and had smuggled a video cassette of it out. usually this is always a friend that cannot for some reason be reached, and no details of the miscreant BBC employee were ever obtained.
quite a flight of fancy, designed to make the storyteller sound cool and well in on a top level secret that much of the nation would like to be part of.
the stories told could be manipulations of time and memories. under no circumstances would i ever claim that i saw anything rare or out of the ordinary regarding Fawlty Towers. i do, however, have distinct memories of seeing John Cleese and Andrew Sachs perform in character outside of the show in the late 70s or early 80s. my memory is of them doing a very short, comedy snippet thing, playing golf near where some cars pass. i think it was shown on Grandstand, which would make sense as they did things like that - i think they had Mike Yarwood do an impression of Brian Clough at one stage.
however, i may well be mistaken. i've searched the internet and cannot find a single word written by anyone which suggests they saw the very same thing.
so how do we know for sure that there really is not a 13th episode of Fawlty Towers? purely because we have not seen it. such a thing would be, due to the enduring and perpetually increasing popularity of the show, be worth a goldmine. had it existed, it would have been the crown jewel what John Cleese would have cashed in when his Ronnie Wood style divorce caused him all sorts of financial problems.
also, people have actively looked for it and not found it. there are accounts of people who trained and worked at the BBC purely so that they may access the vaults and find this episode. all that has come from that is long and fruitful careers, forever tainted with not finding what would surely be the veritable holy grail of British television.
beyond all of that, a cast and crew and audience would have been involved in making this 13th episode. and yet no confirmed or proven case has ever come up in regards of accounts of it. you can conspiracy theory this all you like, but there would be absolutely no value in the effort or cost involved in keeping all involved in a presumably buried 13th episode a secret.
the desire for a 13th episode to really exist is such that something of a cottage industry has stemmed from it. over the years some have dined out on the fact that they can tell the story of seeing it. someone took it as far, at one stage, to write a book on the subject, complete with what they claimed was the "legit and true, honest, no word of a lie" script for the episode.
as someone who is effectively a lifelong fan of the show i would like nothing more than most of this article to be wrong. it would be amazing, man, if one day all of a sudden the shroud of secrecy was dropped, and that the unscreened episode or indeed episodes of Fawlty Towers were shown. alas, this simply isn't going to happen as they simply seem not to exist.
one of the golden rules of entertainment - a law that is frequently ignored or broken - is to always leave your audience longing for more rather than having them bored. the twelve episodes of Fawlty Towers that are real and exist are the personification of this. with that in mind, it is of little or no surprise that many fans over the year have hoped, dreamed and fantasised over more existing.
well, there you go. hopefully this has been of interest to some, and sorry that it's conclusion about any episode existing being a disappointment!
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