Monty Python actor John Cleese slams what he calls the “Faulty Towers Rip-Off Dining Experience”.

Veteran actor and comedian John Cleese has taken to Twitter to slam The Faulty Towers Dining Experience, seen recently in Sydney, as a Fawlty Towers “Rip-Off”.

The Monty Python comedian wrote the original Fawlty Towers TV series with co-star Connie Booth in the 1970s and it is one of the best-loved British comedies of all time. Tweeting on Wednesday, Cleese wrote, “I’ve just found out from an Aussie journalist the astonishing financial success of the ‘Faulty Towers Rip-Off Dining Experience’. Had no idea”. He went on to tweet, “Seems they thought that by not asking, and by changing the ‘w’ to a ‘u’, they’d be in the clear! Hilarious”.

The Faulty Towers Dining Experience, which recently received five stars in a review by Limelight Magazine, is staged by Brisbane company Interactive Theatre International, founded by Alison Pollard-Mansergh, and the first Australian production was performed as long ago as 1997. It now plays in more than 20 countries and will be at the Melbourne Comedy Festival in April.

When one Twitter user described the show as “an excellent time”, Cleese clarified over a series of tweets: “I never heard anything was wrong with the show. After all, they start with a lot of advantages: the basic concept, 40 years of unpaid publicity, the characters’ personalities, the characters’ names, the characters’ dress, the characters’ dialogue, twelve funny episodes to which they make reference, plus all the catch-phrases, without the need to pay Connie Booth and me a single cent.”

Limelight’s Andrew Luboski commented on the combination of old and new material in his review of the show that took place last week in Sydney Opera House’s Utzon Room: “With uncanny representations of the original characters from the show, we could easily have been in Basil’s hotel being served by John Cleese and Connie Booth. The entertainment mixes improvisatory material with some original moments from the series. So we get Basil’s hamster, the knickers on the head bit, and even the famous Hitler walk.”

Meanwhile, the stage version of Cleese’s TV show, Fawlty Towers Live, will be coming to Sydney in August, and Fairfax Media has reported that Cleese is considering taking legal action to protect the interests of investors.

Interactive Theatre International provided Limelight with this statement in response to Cleese’s comments: “We are staggered by John Cleese’s vitriol towards us and our tribute show. He and his management have known about our show for years. We have made nothing like the sums he claims we have. We are not an unauthorised rip-off show – anyone who knows the law in this area will understand that we do not require authorisation to use the concept of Fawlty Towers. We are not the bad guys he is painting us to be. It is a shame he has chosen to air his frustrations so publicly rather than contacting us directly about this matter.”