{"id":273559,"date":"2016-12-02T07:31:26","date_gmt":"2016-12-02T07:31:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=273559"},"modified":"2016-12-02T07:31:26","modified_gmt":"2016-12-02T07:31:26","slug":"andrew-sachs-fawlty-towers-manuel-dies-aged-86","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2016\/12\/andrew-sachs-fawlty-towers-manuel-dies-aged-86\/","title":{"rendered":"Andrew Sachs, Fawlty Towers’ Manuel, dies aged 86"},"content":{"rendered":"
Fawlty Towers star Andrew Sachs, who played hapless Spanish waiter Manuel in the BBC sitcom, has died aged 86, his family has confirmed.<\/p>\n
The actor died on 23 November and was buried on Thursday, his wife Melody said in an interview in the Daily Mail<\/a>.<\/p>\n She told the paper that Sachs had been diagnosed with dementia four years ago.<\/p>\n On his role of Manuel, Sachs had told the BBC in 2014: “It was just a part I was playing and people seemed to laugh.”<\/p>\n Manuel was one of the most imitated comedy characters of the 1970s.<\/p>\n The waiter, who famously hailed from Barcelona, often said little more than the word “Que?” to generate laughs, but arguably his most famous line was “I know nothing”.<\/p>\n The waiter was regularly shown being hit by John Cleese’s hotel manager character, Basil Fawlty.<\/p>\n “I never got upset when he hit me,” Sachs said in 2014.<\/p>\n “He’s my friend, I must say yes, yes [it hurt], several times, more than once.”<\/p>\n Cleese, 77, who was also the co-creator of Fawlty Towers, paid tribute to his co-star.<\/p>\n He wrote on Twitter<\/a>: “Just heard about Andy Sachs. Very sad.<\/p>\n “A very sweet gentle and kind man and a truly great farceur. I first saw him in Habeas Corpus on stage in 1973.<\/p>\n “I could not have found a better Manuel. Inspired.”<\/p>\n Sachs, who was born in Berlin in 1930 but fled Germany for London in 1938, had dozens of other acting roles, both serious and comic – including stints in TV’s two biggest soaps.<\/p>\n In 2009, he played the role of Ramsey Clegg, half-brother of Norris Cole, in ITV’s Coronation Street and in 2015 he briefly joined the BBC’s EastEnders as Cyril Bishop.<\/p>\n He inadvertently became the subject of headlines in 2008 when he received a series of lewd answerphone messages from Russell Brand and fellow BBC Radio 2 presenter Jonathan Ross during a radio show, which related to Sachs’s granddaughter.<\/p>\n The so-called Sachsgate<\/a> affair resulted in Brand and the controller of Radio 2 resigning. Ross was suspended from broadcasting for three months and a review was held into the way BBC output was vetted.<\/p>\n Sachs’s friend, Blackadder actor Tony Robinson, told BBC Radio 5 Live that Sachs had been “very modest” and said that “it really came as a surprise to him that he had the success that he did”.<\/p>\n “People know him for that one comedy performance, but he was actually a magnificently talented man in a number of fields,” he said, adding that Sachs had been “a very fine photographer” and “a very accomplished playwright”.<\/p>\n He said: “He’s worked in radio for very many years and in a way, given how shy and retiring he was, it was a good form for him.<\/p>\n “His face wasn’t shown, he could work a lot but he didn’t have to be a celebrity – and then suddenly he was thrown into the limelight.”<\/p>\n Comedian Omid Djalili tweeted<\/a>: “Sad to learn of the passing of Andrew Sachs. Fond memories sharing a dressing room with him & Bill Bailey at We Are Most Amused in 2008.”<\/p>\n Samuel West, whose mother Prunella Scales starred alongside Sachs in Fawlty Towers, tweeted<\/a>: “Creator of one of our most beloved EU migrants.<\/p>\n “Such warmth and wit; impossible to think of him without smiling.”<\/p>\n Little Britain creator David Walliams described his performances as Manuel as “comic perfection”.<\/p>\n He tweeted<\/a>: “I had the pleasure of working with #AndrewSachs in ‘Attachments’. A beautiful soul who never tired of all my ‘Fawlty Towers’ questions.”<\/p>\n Comedy writer Edgar Wright said Sachs had “spun comic gold as Manuel in Fawlty Towers”.<\/p>\n Actor Eddie Marsan, who starred in the BBC’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrel, tweeted<\/a>: “RIP Andrew Sachs. You came here as a refugee with nothing but your talent and your spirit, and you enriched our lives. Thank you so much.”<\/p>\n ‘Allo ‘Allo actress Vicki Michelle tweeted<\/a>: “So sorry to hear of #AndrewSachs passing. Happy memories of working with him, a lovely gentle man. Thoughts are with his family.”<\/p>\n‘Comic gold’<\/h2>\n