Roger Lewis

The harrowing, inspiring life of Andrew Sachs

A review of Andrew Sachs' I Know Nothing! Faulty Towers' punchline of a waiter – and Russell Brand's favoured target – endured much greater sorrows with style

The unfortunate Manuel in Fawlty Towers — portrayed by the similarly accident-prone Andrew Sachs [Getty Images/Shutterstock/iStock/Alamy] 
issue 15 March 2014

Comedians always like to claim that they started making jokes after childhoods made harsh by poverty; that at a formative age they were tormented by appalling cruelty and neglect. Griff Rhys Jones had to leave Wales at the age of six days, for instance. Nevertheless, the Chaplin family could afford a maid in Kennington. The Leeds of Alan Bennett and the Morecambe of Victoria Wood always sound cosy — as does the Hadley Wood of Eric Morecambe; and there was not much wrong with Barry Humphries’s salubrious Melbourne, though I concede it has been knocked flat by ‘developers’ since. But with Andrew Sachs the horrors were very real. Aged eight, ‘I stood open-mouthed as a number of men, wielding wooden clubs, shattered the front of a shoe shop. It was 9 November 1938. Kristallnacht.’

Sachs was born in Berlin, with a Jewish father and a Catholic mother. Dr Hans Sachs was a decorated Great War veteran, ‘of solid-gold Prussian ancestry’.

Comments

Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months

Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.

Already a subscriber? Log in