Just spotted the obit today for the actor Andrew Sachs - he had actually died at the end of November, aged 86 and had suffered from vascular dementia for some years - who played Manuel in the classic British comedy Fawlty Towers.
Until I saw him interviewed years ago on the "Arts Show", I hadn't realised that Mr Sachs, - whom I had always thought of as a quintessential Englishman (playing an endlessly put-upon Spanish waiter - Manuel - in Fawlty Towers), actually came form a German Jewish background and had fled Berlin with his family shortly before the Second World War in order to escape persecution under the Nazis.
A wonderfully engaging man, he was an extraordinarily talented comic actor, without whom 'Fawlty Towers' - a classic of British comedy - silly would not have been the same.
Until I saw him interviewed years ago on the "Arts Show", I hadn't realised that Mr Sachs, - whom I had always thought of as a quintessential Englishman (playing an endlessly put-upon Spanish waiter - Manuel - in Fawlty Towers), actually came form a German Jewish background and had fled Berlin with his family shortly before the Second World War in order to escape persecution under the Nazis.
A wonderfully engaging man, he was an extraordinarily talented comic actor, without whom 'Fawlty Towers' - a classic of British comedy - silly would not have been the same.
