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At the Odeon de Spiegel, Zwolle there was some super speedy table service in an amazingly decorated room. Zwolle currently holds the records for the fastest Faulty Towers table service at 4 minutes 50 seconds for a room of over 100. A big thank you to Annette and Ton for inviting the Faulty team back!
We also, sadly, lost an important member of the team when a plastic fish was taken. Any information leading to his return should be tweeted @thefaultytowers.
Fact of the day:
“Toi toi toi!” is the Dutch equivalent of the English saying, “break a leg!”
Netherlands Tour update! Last week at the Theater Aan Die Schie, Schiedam took breaking the boundaries between performer and actor to a new level with tables set up on stage in a large theatre auditorium. Manuel (Anthony) likes to try and play cupid during the show and we think that this week he might have had some success – Stefan and Rosalieka, if you’re reading this, let us know if you ever went on that date!
Some photos of Andy Foreman and Alison Pollard-Mansergh, who co-created the show in 1997, on tour in the Netherlands.
Last week the Netherlands Faulty Towers team (Alison Pollard-Mansergh as Sybil, Jordan Edmeades as Basil and Anthony Sottile as Manuel) enjoyed a week of sold out shows in the beautiful, Art-Deco Thalia Theatre in Ijmuiden. Some great food and packed out shows despite more snow made for a great week.
It was also a week of two Sybils, with a guest appearance from the lovely Donna Gray and after a week of maybe one too many desserts came the very serious suggestion that a certain member of the cast invest in elasticated trousers (any guesses?)
This week the show appeared in Schiedam and Zwolle and look out for some cheesey jokes next week to celebrate the show appearing in Gouda, the home of Gouda cheese.
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MISSING:
The fish, the whole fish & nothing but the fish.
(Pictured: 4 year old fellow fish in props kit, now out of retirement due to the disappearance)
Internationally acclaimed touring plastic fish and integral part of Faulty Towers The Dining Experience’s props kit, was last seen on Sunday 3 February 2013 at 15:42 hours, leaving Odeon Theater, Zwolle in woman’s handbag.
A witness explained: “The woman met the fish and became emotionally attached to it almost immediately. It looked just like a fish her recently deceased Father owned.” This is no joke, no laughing matter and certainly no red herring.
The fish (less than 2 months in the team) had been commissioned to replace an older, rather more tired fish (pictured above). It had been shipped around the world and customised to meet high Faulty standards. Screws and eyes had been added, the body lacquered and the fish weighted in a technique developed by experts over more than a decade.
Please note: If you see the fish please remember he cannot swim due to some weight issues.
Some reactions to the disappearance:
Half fish (and fellow member of the props kit) says:
“I’m in pieces!”
Basil Faulty (denies intimate relationship with fish) says:
“I was very attached to it. I often felt it was a part of me.”
Sybil Faulty says:
“The fish will not be missed.”
Prop Rat says:
“It could have been me!”
Witness 1 – Alice, aged 6 says:
“What fish?”
Witness 2 – Anonymous says:
“He was just in the wrong plaice at the wrong time”
Alexander, of the Odeon Zwolle, had this to say on the matter:
“I really don’t know where it is. We don’t have a name.”
The fish was a firm favourite in the props kit community and his disappearance will be sorely felt.
Investigations continue. For more updates please see @thefaultytowers.
Thanks to The Floral Pavilion Theatre in New Brighton for hosting three fantastic sold out shows last weekend. The theatre is such a wonderful venue that hosts a wide range of music and comedy throughout the year – a perfect match for the antics of Basil, Sybil and Manuel! The Faulty team (Donna Gray as Sybil, Paul O’Neil as Basil and Brian Roche as Manuel) thoroughly enjoyed themselves and are looking forward to returning in the near future.
You can listen to Basil, Sybil and Manuel chatting (and bickering) with Nick Robins on his BBC Merseyside breakfast show (fast forward to 3 hours and ten minutes). Just don’t expect Manuel to know what’s for dinner…
In case you didn’t make the show, do check out our website to see when we’ll be touring in Merseyside again.
The lovely faulty towers fans of the Netherlands have this week braved thick snow and lows of minus 6 to see the show at Theaters Tilburg (The Tilburg Theatre) in, you guessed it, Tilburg in the Netherlands.
The venue is a theatre with tables set on tiers meaning that everyone gets an even clearer view than usual. It’s great to hear that in the crowd tonight are quite a few ‘reoffenders’ who came to see the show last year and just couldn’t stay away this year.
Jeroen and Edwin. Even after seeing the show twice they say they’d come back again!
Jeremy Dorling, Dave Playford, Desiree Dorling, Rob Lammeree, Keith Fletcher, Regina Playford & Rick Busbridge.
Anthony & Ali with Lies Wenselaar, whose daughter Yvonne is one of our producers here in the Netherlands.
If you’ve got your own real life Fawlty Towers experiences you’d like to share with us, tweet them @thefaultytowers or email them to: polly@faultytowers-uk.com. No matter how outrageous we’d love to hear them and the best will be shared right here on the blog to amuse fellow Faulty Fans. Just remember, no names please!
Here are some that we’ve already collected… enjoy!
One member of staff, when I informed her that the hotel was going to charge me five pounds a page to send a fax, exclaimed ‘they can’t do that!’… Before realising she was part of the hotel.
I ordered only toast for breakfast. It came out burnt. I complained and the waiter argued with me that “it comes that way”, so I asked him for some fresh toast that wasn’t burnt. You guessed it; he took it away and scraped it before returning it to me!
I stayed in a hostel once where during the night I was awoken by rain dripping through the ceiling onto my face. The puzzling part is – we weren’t even on the top floor.
I stayed in a hotel room with a sloped table. Whenever you put anything on the table it just slid straight back off again.
I was checking on our meeting room at 4am when a guest came down to read some of the magazines in the lobby. No problem, right? Except he came down in his UNDERWEAR and SLIPPERS!
I stayed at a hotel in northern Zimbabwe where baboons broke into our room, drank my Fanta and ate my biscuits.
Helpful little signs posted around a room that read
“Take your things of the floor and bed or we will cancel you cleaning service”
“Use string. Do not pull curtain.”
When my husband went to the bar to place the order he was told he had to pay now “in case we did a runner”.
In the restaurant, we watched every order be carried around and offered to at least 3 or 4 tables before they struck on the right one. Training Tip – If you deliver a meal to a table, when you head back up the stairs, maybe survey other tables and take the empties with you. That way, customers don’t have to do it themselves.
We arrived (two couples) and were sent to two attic rooms! On the landing decorators were in the middle of painting bad we head to climb over paint pots with our bags!
When I asked the manager (who to be fair was a nice guy) why there was not any tomato or lettuce he replied; “it normally comes back uneaten, so we don’t put it on anymore.”
The first week of the Belgium and Netherlands tour complete and what a week it’s been! The tour has kicked off to a great start with a run of four shows at the Cultuur Centrum Zwaneberg in Heist-Op-Den-Berg, Belgium.
The venue is a cultural centre with a large theatre space, amazing lighting and some excellent staff who have really made the team feel very welcome – and provided Sybil with a brilliant opportunity to practise her language skills! The room holds up to 150 people so the performers (Alison Pollard-Mansergh, Jordan Edmeades & Anthony Sottile) have been kept on their toes travelling round the space and making sure everyone gets their share of Faulty laughs.
With second and third nights both getting standing ovations from the crowd and some guests even returning to see the show a second time, it can only be described as a huge success.
The performances here sold out in June of last year but if you were hoping to come along and didn’t manage to get tickets don’t panic, the Faultys will be back in Belgium later in the year. Don’t forget to sign up to our mailing list and keep checking our website to find out when new tour dates are added.
 Ali, Jordan & Anthony survey the room before the first show |
 Ali, Jordan & Anthony as Sybil, Basil & Manuel before the first show |
 Standing ovation |
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