Cleese: Poorly run business made me ‘rich’

A POORLY run family business was responsible for one of the most successful television shows of all time, comedian and actor John Cleese revealed last night.

Addressing guests at Thomas Crosbie Holdings’ (TCH) annual dinner, Mr Cleese revealed how the Donald Sinclair run Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay was the inspiration for Basil Fawlty and his much-loved show Fawlty Towers.

Speaking at the gala dinner in Cork last night, Mr Cleese revealed that if the Monty Python group, who were filming in the resort in 1971, had not stayed in Mr Sinclair’s hotel, the world may never have heard of Fawlty Towers.

Turning to business Mr Cleese went on to reveal his own concerns about “free market thinking” and said that, like Basil Fawlty, he now enjoyed running his company without having to answer to investors.

“I have no investors and so I don’t have to follow the free marketeers’ moral principles,” he said.

The acclaimed comedian and actor went on to suggest he was not an advocate of free market thinking as laid down by Scottish moral philosopher and pioneering political economist Adam Smith.

“A few of us economic illiterates wonder if free markets really will provide enough doctors in Africa or even in America... when we learn that after Hurricane Katrina, thousands of people lost their jobs and their health coverage, the one State-funded hospital in New Orleans closed, and massive numbers of doctors and nurses left.

“But I’m sure the free marketeers can explain that was because somebody somewhere wasn’t maximising their profits,” he said.

Mr Cleese pointed out that it was not doctors, firemen, architects, teachers, plumbers, solicitors, artists or the police who suggest America will be best served by the maximising of profits — “it's economists”, he said.

Mr Cleese pointed out, however, that psychological studies of economic students revealed that they tend not to donate to university charitable funds aimed at the needy or foreign students.

“They also have more lax attitudes about cheating and about people getting kickbacks or bribes. And economic professors are less likely to donate to charity compared with other professors.

“So when economists describe as rational, behaviour, which the rest of us would describe as greedy and non-cooperative, that’s just because greedy, non-cooperative behaviour seems rational to economists,” he added.

Mr Cleese is one of a long line of distinguished speakers who have addressed the TCH annual dinner. Previous speakers include former British prime minister the Rt Hon John Major CH, US presidential hopeful and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, Prof Michael Porter, Sir John Harvey Jones, Henry Kissinger and Bob Geldof.