Fans buy ‘Fawlty Towers’ hotel

Fans of the 1970s British TV series “Fawlty Towers” have bought the hotel that inspired the show for about $2.8 million.

Husband-and-wife supermarket entrepreneurs Kumar and Panna Patel and Kumar’s brother Keethri said Tuesday that they purchased the Hotel Gleneagles in Torquay, in southwest England.

“We were big fans of the ‘Fawlty Towers’ program so we believe that it will prove to be a sound investment to have bought one of the best-known hotels in the United Kingdom,” Panna Patel said.

John Cleese, who co-wrote and starred in the series (which consists of only 12 episodes), based his outrageously rude character Basil Fawlty on Donald Sinclair, a former owner of the hotel, after staying there with other members of the Monty Python comedy team in 1971.