A few weeks before Kristallnacht in
November 1938, Andrew Sachs looked on as Nazi officers arrested his father
while the family was eating in a restaurant. The son of a Jewish father and a
lapsed Catholic mother, a few days later he watched as the Nazis burned and
looted Jewish shops on the streets of Berlin. The boy who witnessed these
events before he and his family escaped to London would later become famous for
being the butt of comic cruelties in Fawlty Towers. However, the journey to
Torquay, where the iconic series was set, was a long and unexpected one.
I Know
Nothing recounts anecdotes of a bizarre adolescence, the author's often
hilarious struggle to come to terms with all things English, including the
food, the schools and the perils of the language (rude words especially!), his
early days in rep, and later working with a galaxy of stars including Rex
Harrison, Norman Wisdom, Noel Coward, Alec Guinness, Richard Burton, Peter
Sellers and Dame Edith Evans. It tells of how he eventually came to team up
with John Cleese on the show that would make him famous as the hapless waiter
from Barcelona, and tells the true story of how the classic series was made and
the personalities involved in its creation.
