The Builders

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Fawlty Towers episode
“The Builders”
Episode no.	Season 1 Episode 2
Writer(s)	John Cleese & Connie Booth
Director	John Howard Davies
Production no.
Original airdate	26 September 1975
Episode chronology
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"A Touch of Class"	"The Wedding Party"
List of Fawlty Towers episodes

"The Builders" is the second episode in the first series of the BBC TV sitcom Fawlty Towers.

1 Synopsis
2 Cast
3 Plot
4 Trivia

[edit] Synopsis

Basil hires cowboy builder O'Reilly to do some vital work on the hotel. However, due to the builders' incompetence a disaster occurs, and Basil turns to his new garden gnome as a source of violence while wreaking revenge...

[edit] Cast

Episode Credited cast:

With:

James Appleby as Mr. Stubbs
Michael Cronin as Mr. Lurphy
Barney Dorman as Mr. Kerr
Michael Halsey as Mr. Jones
George Lee as Delivery Man

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Basil tells his resident guests Major Gowen, Miss Tibbs, and Miss Gatsby that they will have to eat at another hotel, as workmen are coming to do work on the hotel. The Fawltys themselves are going away on a rare holiday with Audrey and some other friends. Polly and Manuel therefore are left with the responsibility of taking care of the workmen. Basil tells Polly that the workmen will be from O'Reilly's business, an Irish cowboy builder with very little understanding of the building trade, as opposed to Stubbs who are respectable professionals (who he has told Sybil will be doing the work). The main reason for this deception is that O'Reilly is much cheaper.

Polly and Manuel are left in charge. It seems there are very few guests staying, and Polly uses Manuel as a model for some sketches. She is tired, and therefore tells Manuel that she is going for a 'siesta' (Spanish for little sleep) and instructs him to wake her up when the builders come.

Manuel is left to his own devices, daydreaming and acting that he runs the hotel and one of the quotes he says is "Manuel Towers, How are you? Its nice today..". A delivery man drops off a gnome that Sybil had ordered. Later on, three of O'Reilly's builders turn up, and so after some banter and misunderstanding, Manuel goes to wake Polly up. However she looks so blissful that he cannot bring himself to do so. Basil rings the hotel but Manuel does not recognise him and assumes the voice on the other end is looking for Basil so Manuel berates him. After finally realising that it is in fact Basil on the other end, Manuel drops the phone in horror, Basil then instructs Manuel to call one of the builders (Lurphy) a 'hideous orangutan'. Lurphy promptly punches Manuel in the face.

The next morning, Basil arrives to check on the hotel to see if everything is sound. However he finds that the builders have blocked up the wrong doorway and the dining room entrance has disappeared, much to his dismay. In a fit of fury, as well as fear at his wife's reaction, Basil threatens first then Polly and Manuel, before phoning O'Reilly and threatening that if he is not at the hotel in twenty minutes, he will "come over there and insert a large garden gnome in [him]".

O'Reilly arrives, and while Basil is telling him to hurry up, Sybil - having forgotten her golf shoes - arrives back earlier than expected. Basil blames the chaos on Stubbs' men. Sybil responds to this by telling Basil that she saw O'Reilly's van outside. Eventually Basil concedes the work was done by O'Reilly. When O'Reilly tries to joke with her about the mistake, she assaults Basil and O'Reilly, both verbally and physically.

Sybil calls Stubbs to get him to do the work the next morning. She tells O'Reilly to leave, then storms off, not to return until the next morning. Unwilling to concede that he was wrong to hire O'Reilly, Basil convinces O'Reilly to stay and do the work anyway.

Sybil arrives in the morning to find the renovations have been completed by O'Reilly, apparently with no problems. As Stubbs arrives Sybil confesses her embarrassment at having brought him out. Stubbs questions Basil and discovers that O'Reilly has not used a lintel, meaning the supporting wall could give way at any moment, and he will need to repair it immediately. Basil leaves the hotel immediately, with his garden gnome under his arms, explaining that he is going to see O'Reilly, and then he might go to Canada. The rest is left to the imagination...

[edit] Trivia

Basil tells his guests that they must go to "The Gleneagles" for their dinners. This is a reference to the Hotel Gleneagles which Donald Sinclair, the hotel manager on which John Cleese based Basil Fawlty, ran in Torquay, the town where Fawlty Towers is set.
George Lee, who plays the delivery man, is the only non-recurring actor to play the same character in more than one episode. He also appears in the episode: "Communication Problems".
John Cleese named The Builders as "the least good" of the Fawlty Towers episodes that were filmed, owing to a general lack of laughter in the studio on recording day. He recalls that members of the Icelandic Broadcasting Corporation were visiting the studio that day and many of them were in the front row seats, apparently not entirely amused.
When Basil beats Manuel's head against the wall O'Reilly's men have made, it quite visibly moves.
David Kelly also portrayed Grandpa Joe in the 2005 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.