
Paul Nicholas: We've kept the goose stepping in Fawlty Towers – I don't think that's wrong
Paul Nicholas is trying to pinpoint precisely what it is about Fawlty Towers that makes it so British. He settles on the setting – the slightly drab boarding house common to many a British seaside town. 'I stayed in plenty of them as a kid, although perhaps never with such an extreme landlord as Basil,' he says. 'I suppose you get them in other countries too, but they feel very particular to the English from way back.' Not the humour then? 'Well, yes, of course, the humour. That's very British. All those jokes about the Germans. We are laughing at our isolation to some extent.'
Nicholas didn't watch John Cleese's epochal sitcom during the 1970s – he was too busy being a pop pin-up. He's fully immersed in the mayhem of Basil's world now though – he was cast as the addled Major for Cleese's West End adaptation, which received rave reviews last year and is back for another run ahead of a UK tour. The stage show essentially combines three TV scripts spliced together with barely any changes, although mercifully, the racial slurs aired by the Major in the original have been cut. 'People are sensitive to those things and quite rightly, you can't go around calling people w--- and the N-word,' says Nicholas.
Cleese maintained in a piece for The Telegraph last year that those lines were written at the Major's expense, but Nicolas argues the only thing that matters is that they are no longer there. 'Because then the comedy comes about one thing, which is the Major being a racist. Of course, there is a willingness to be offended among some people, and they do seem to have a very loud voice. But taking the piss out of someone because they are a different skin colour is the lowest form of humour. We've kept the goose stepping though. The goose-stepping is OK.'
I tell him the TV episode featuring this particular scene was briefly removed in 2020 by the BBC from their catch-up service UKTV. A UKTV spokesperson later confirmed this was because of the Major's comments, which appear in the same episode, although at the time, the Guardian pointed out that most broadcasters had long edited out these comments anyway. Nicolas shakes his head at this. 'The Germans did goose step. They were our enemy. If you have a German guest in your hotel and they are pissing you off, you can imitate the ridiculous nature of what they were doing at that time. I don't think that's wrong.'
We've met during a lunch break for rehearsals for Fawlty Towers at an east London studio. Nicholas is hurriedly consuming a burger and chips. He is 80, but there is still a clear trace of the pretty boy jaw line and twinkly eyes that made him a favourite among women of a certain age during the 1970s and 1980s, like a blond equivalent of David Essex. He looks a bit embarrassed when I bring this up. 'I wouldn't say I was a star,' he says. 'I had a bit of that, but I was never comfortable with it. I'm relatively shy when I am being me. When I am on stage, I could be anything or anyone.'
All the same, Nicholas has had an extraordinary career. He's known most of all as the rascally Vince in the 1980s sitcom Just Good Friends, but his unthreatening boy-next-door sex appeal belies a CV studded with the counterculture rebellion. He's had songs written for him by David Bowie and Pete Townshend and starred as the narrator Claude in the first UK production of the antiwar musical Hair (known in simple terms as the musical in which nearly all the cast take their clothes off).
He was Jesus Christ in the original West End production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's flamboyant rock musical Jesus Christ Superstar which was met with protests when it premiered on the West End in 1972, and collaborated with Richard O' Brien on a few early songs for The Rocky Horror Show. His very first act was as the piano player with Screaming Lord Sutch's backing band the Savages, which mixed the French theatre of Grand Guignol with gothic high camp. 'It was the smashing of boundaries which made the 60s exciting,' says Nicholas. 'But today we've been there and done that. We've gone the other way a bit now.'
Nicholas, who is now a great-grandfather, is still smooth and still charming, but he is disarmingly unaffected. He comes across as a most unlikely cultural anarchist. A child of the 1950s, he remembers a childhood defined by 'rationing and powdered egg'. His father was the showbiz lawyer Oscar Beuselinck. As Beuselinck was still trying to establish his career, Nicholas barely saw him when he was younger. 'We weren't very well off, we lived on a council estate in my nan's flat in north London. Everything closed on a Sunday. England always seemed to be grey and drab.'
The only splash of colour came from the musicals his mother would take him to see at the local cinema. 'I wasn't very bright. I couldn't spell or add up. Life was quite hard going and movies, music and dance were an escape. I was always attracted to Singin' In The Rain because it looked warm, there was sunshine.'
His home life was tough in other ways. The three-times-married Beuselinck would become a lawyer to stars including Sean Connery and Richard Harris, and was known throughout London as both a fabulous raconteur and an appalling womaniser. When he died in 1997, the Guardian obituary described him as a 'randy, abusive, brilliant tyrant who made most people laugh and some cry'. He often made jokes about how much he paid out in alimony and is said to have sacked a secretary caught with another man in his office for fear she might become a rival to his reputation. Nicholas, though, is fairly forgiving of a man who, in later life, admitted he regretted not being a better father to Nicholas and Nicholas' younger step-brother Richard.
'He came from quite a poor background. His father was a chef on a ship. So he didn't have it easy,' he says. 'He left school to work for a law firm as a 14-year-old boy and qualified in the end as a lawyer. He didn't have much time for me and my mother because he was trying to create a path for himself. But their relationship was not good. They were not at all well suited, and there was a lot of shouting. When I was about 12, they split up. I thought: thank God for that.'
Either way, Nicholas certainly possessed his father's same drive and desire for reinvention. Desperate to become a performer, he sent off for piano lessons because his mother couldn't afford a teacher, 'although when I got them in the post I couldn't understand them. And also, we didn't have a piano'. He formed a band at school and, after leaving school in 1962, joined The Savages as a keyboard player. One of Screaming Lord Sutch's more famous acts was a Jack the Ripper sketch, and Nicolas would put on a frock and play the female victims. 'It was the high point of his show. He'd stab me, then pull out a rubber heart and rubber lung. Later, he went to the butcher and got the proper stuff.' He is surprised when I point out that this act would not go down well today. 'You don't think it would? It's factual, though isn't it? It happened.'
In the mid-1960s, he started branching out as a pop singer. In 1967, Bowie, who at the time was still known as Davy Jones, wrote for him the jail break single Over The Wall We Go, which was promptly banned by the BBC for fear it would inspire copycat prison breakouts. 'I didn't mind at all,' says Nicholas. 'It gave me good bragging rights.' Nicholas soaked it all up, joining the Aldermaston 'ban the bomb' marches, and with Sutch, played at the Star Club in Hamburg, where the Beatles would later play. 'England was opening up. The 50s had been very tight arsed; people had been recovering from the war. But in the 1960s, people were restarting their lives.'
In 1967, he won the role of the narrator Claude in Hair. The production had to wait until the abolishment of theatre censorship in 1968 before it could open because it contained scenes of nudity and the F-word, but as soon as it premiered, it became a sensation. Part of the show includes a scene where the audience joined the cast onstage. One night, Nicolas noticed Princess Anne was standing right next to him. 'She came a few times actually. It's funny because we are supposed to be very reserved in this country but inviting people up on stage only happened in London. It didn't happen in New York. You probably couldn't do it now because of health and safety. '
Then came Jesus Christ Superstar, in 1972, in which Nicolas played Jesus himself. The show was met with protests on opening night because of its perceived blasphemous nature, but Nicolas argues the production was never intended to shock. 'To call Jesus Christ a superstar was a bit transgressive and we did have people protesting. But when he was crucified, audiences were moved by the whole thing. It wasn't a cheap stunt. It was a pretty honest portrayal – there was nothing deliberately offensive about the production.'
It's quite a CV. Did the 1960s and 1970s feel freer than today? 'Probably. You didn't have people watching you. The fact we could say f--k on stage and stand there with no clothes on, particularly in this country, would indicate that anything could go. Today, you can't say certain things, and that's fine, particularly if you are denigrating people for their race.'
All the same, he broadly dislikes today's more morally censorious climate. 'People always go too far. People should feel freer to say what they feel without someone snitching on them and ruining their career. It is sad when people lose their livelihood because they've said the wrong thing; it's ridiculous. People should be a bit more forgiving.' He's currently got two sitcoms of his own in development and admits he's had a pause for thought himself. 'I did remove a couple of things. My wife [Linzi, his second] said you won't get away with that. So yes, you are always aware of that. But you want a project to succeed. You don't want it to fall at the first hurdle.'
Did he ever behave back then in a way that shocks him now? 'At the start, I wasn't very clever in terms of the ladies,' he says. 'Women had just got the pill and I was a little bit free and easy, to be honest with you, so I'm not particularly proud of how I behaved. Although I should point out this was prior to being married [he married his first wife, Susan Gee in 1966 and they had two children]. If you were in a band, your encounters tended to be one-night stands. And girls used to wait, although not necessarily for me. I always resented the bass player; he always seemed to do quite well. But the odd girl did seem interested.'
He's being a bit disingenuous: his personal life was complicated. He had already had two children by different women when he married Gee. That marriage then ended when Nicolas met the actress Linzi Jennings – they married in 1984, and have two children together; they now live in Highgate and Nicholas proudly shows me a photograph of his two-year-old grandson – he has 12 altogether and three great grandchildren.
Yet in 1977, his first wife died aged 38 in a car crash. 'That was utterly horrible. Initially, my mother helped out with the children. But they already knew Linzi, so eventually we all moved in together. It was pretty dreadful to lose someone like that so suddenly. You pick up the phone and you hear. It was as devastating as one can imagine.' He is wary about quantifying the impact on the children he had shared with Gee, who were eight and 10. 'All I know is that we did what we could to get them through.'
After Superstar, Nicolas worked in both theatre and film and resurrected his pop career. He had three UK top 20 hits, including Reggae Like It Used To Be, Grandma's Party and Dancing With The Captain, while his 1977 single Heaven on the 7th Floor reached the US Billboard top 10. The videos on YouTube are extraordinary.
He embodies the sort of squeaky clean, nudge nudge wink wink charisma much more likely to appeal to the mothers of teenage girls rather than the girls themselves. 'I got a bit of fan mail but not like the Beatles,' he says. 'I certainly didn't get women throwing themselves at my feet.'
Still, he had enough female fans to win him the role of Vince in the 1983 John Sullivan sitcom Just Good Friends. The show focused on Vince and Penny (Jan Francis) who meet five years after Vince jilted her at the altar. He got the part only because the women in the typing pool at the BBC lobbied the sceptical casting director; he also sang the theme tune. He's remained a jobbing actor ever since, starring in numerous West End musicals and plays, appearing as Gavin Sullivan in EastEnders and in 2017, The Real Marigold Hotel. In 2021, he released a rap single Bad Bad Rapper. It's curiously quite good.
All the same, it's hard to square the man in front of me with that of the man who once delivered leaflets for Lord Sutch when Sutch stood against Harold Wilson in the 1966 election while wearing leopard skin pants. Has he always been politically active? 'Actually I don't really have any politics. In fact I've never voted. I did vote for the Greens once.
'But I've never really felt passionate enough about any one party to say, 'I'm for you'.' He is certainly no fan of the outsized personality politics of someone like Sutch, however much on the fringe Sutch remained. 'I was very disappointed when Trump got in. I honestly didn't think he would.' What does he think of Nigel Farage? 'I don't pay attention to Farage and Reform. Although I can understand it. I've got a friend who was a Thatcherite, and he is now voting Reform. Farage speaks to that kind of old Conservative who misses whatever it is that they want.'
I suspect Nicholas is an old hippy at heart, although he protests that's not the case either. 'I don't live for the 60s. A lot of it was people sitting around smoking dope and falling asleep. We had more energy in the 1970s. There was Thatcher. People thought: 'I've got to get on with things.' There wasn't so much sitting around hoping things would happen because they never do.' Given that he is now entering his seventh decade as a performer, not sitting around could be his personal philosophy. 'I'm just a guy who likes to work.'
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Daily Mail
23 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Freddy Brazier reveals he turned down Love Island in an attempt to step away from his family name and admits his social media is just like the ITV2 show
Freddy Brazier has revealed he turned down dating show Love Island and that he wants to step away from his family name and not be remembered for who his parents are. The 20-year-old son of Jeff Brazier and the late Jade Goody told The Mail how producers recently offered him a slot on the show. 'I'm on Instagram, I don't need Love Island,' he said. 'I've got Love Island on my phone from my bed. 'I need to do something without him [my dad]. I don't want to be seen as 'Freddy from Race with his dad.' I want to be known for something on my own. 'I'm more interested in modelling. I've got some good opportunities coming up – but this stuff with my dad isn't helping that.' Freddy's reveal comes as he insisted, he is now 'not' going to rehab, days after revealing he was going to 'get clean' in Marbella. He told fans last week that he has been addicted to smoking from the age of 12 and would be heading for treatment soon. Freddy shared in an Instagram post on Sunday that he has decided he 'doesn't need rehab' and instead just 'needs a boys' holiday or a retreat'. Posting a black and white photo of his younger self, he wrote: 'You know what I don't need rehab! I just need a holiday with a good group of boys or a retreat.' Last week, Freddy also made candid remarks about wanting to rebuild a healthy relationship with his father Jeff, 46, after a family rift. Freddy wrote: 'I've decided that I will be cutting down And I want to go to Rehab In Marbs as I feel if I'm in England I won't take getting clean seriously. 'I've been smoking from the age of 12 and it's time to stop it was a bad coping mechanism that turnt into an addiction something I relied on and something that made me feel sane and some what ok. 'I've found a rehabilitation centre and a boxing club I've found someone I want to get to know and I'm happy I got a good bunch of friends and I get out and enjoy myself. 'I want to be clean so I can life happily and have healthy relationships with people and be there for all of my family rather then feeling like I'm in the middle and have to choose a side.' He continued: 'I haven't been able to feel love properly as I have never loved myself and it starts now I want to play football and take up boxing I want to be happy and be in a healthy relationship and have a healthy relationship with my Nana and my father.' Celebrity Race Across the World star Freddy lost his mother when he was just four years old after she died from cervical cancer in 2009, and has since been raised by his dad Jeff. Jeff has clashed multiple times with Jade's mum Jackiey Budden, and it was revealed last month the TV star is taking action in an attempt to legally block contact between his son and his grandmother, to keep him safe'. And Freddy's love life has also recently made headlines. His Love Island admission comes just days after Freddy enjoyed a first date with controversial influencer Tasha Newcombe, 22, at Glasshouse Terrace in London Bridge. Tasha hit headlines herself last summer when she, then 21, became romantically involved with 16-year-old Marko Vituk, from Maidstone. MailOnline contacted Bobby and Jackiey's reps for comment. The latest series of the reality dating show kicks off on Monday night with host Maya Jama [pictured] set to introduce a new batch of sexy singletons looking for love The new season of Love Island returns on June 9 with the full line-up of contestants confirmed. This year's crop of hopefuls include a Declan Rice body double, fire breather and Maura Higgins lookalike and Maya will once again be at the helm after joining the popular dating series in January 2023. This year, the show celebrates a decade on screens and promises to have 'more twists and turns than ever before' in honour of their 10-year anniversary.


The Sun
29 minutes ago
- The Sun
Katie Price cruelly slammed by mum-shaming trolls as she poses with son Harvey at home
KATIE Price has been cruelly slammed by mum-shaming trolls. The former glamour model, 47, came under fire after she posted a sweet snap with son Harvey, 22, at home 4 4 4 It came after Katie shared a picture of her and Harvey doing some baking. In the photo the mother and son are posing in the kitchen, with a packet of cake mix in view. Katie captioned the shot with: "Baking with Harvey 🍰 carrot cake for all the family today." While the majority of comments were kind, there were some trolls who used the picture to mum-shame her. One wrote: "Thought you were really worried about Harvey's weight!!! And you make a cake?!" While another added: "Bake it from scratch Katie. You can make one much healthier than from that cake mix, and use real butter not spread." This one said: "Wouldn't it have been healthier for Harvey if you'd made it from scratch." Another chimed in: "You moan about his weight but feed him cake." HARVEY'S WEIGHT JOURNEY Meanwhile, last week Katie gave her fans an update on Harvey's weight loss journey. She has been worried about her son's health after his weight reached 30st. Katie Price drops huge hint daughter Princess Andre is in talks for Love Island after boyfriend split But now she has revealed they have looked at weight loss jabs to help him. Speaking on the latest episode of her The Katie Price Show podcast, she said: "Hopefully Harvey starts his Mounjaro this week, but we'll talk about that next week and I'll go through all of what's happening about that." The mum-of-five previously opened up on how Harvey's life was at risk because of his size. The TV personality's eldest child has Prader-Willi syndrome, which sparks a constant desire to eat food and a permanent feeling of hunger which leads to obesity. 4 Harvey battles a series of debilitating conditions including autism, septo-optic dysplasia, ADHD and oppositional defiant disorder. In a video posted in April, Katie revealed: 'I'm so heartbroken and gutted that his weight is just going up. 'I just googled it in stones, 188kg is just a few kg of being 30 stone. 'It's so life-threatening now, I'm still waiting for the doctors to get back to me starting on the Mounjaro and his journey to a healthy life.' She continued: 'It's so sad his quality of life at the moment where he's so big, he just can't really do much. 'It's just another thing I have to deal with because he's at high risk of having a heart attack, he struggles to put his trainers or struggles to walk anywhere but I love him and I'm going to help him through this. 'So sad, obesity and his condition is sad, it's sad to see someone go through it and he doesn't understand.' In February Katie told The Sun she consulted top doctors who suggested starting Harvey on the jabs in a bid to improve his chances of living longer. Harvey's biological dad is former footballer Dwight, 53, dated for a short period between 2000 and 2001, but split shortly after Katie told him she was pregnant. Everything you need to know about fat jabs Weight loss jabs are all the rage as studies and patient stories reveal they help people shed flab at almost unbelievable rates, as well as appearing to reduce the risk of serious diseases. Wegovy – a modified version of type 2 diabetes drug Ozempic – and Mounjaro are the leading weight loss injections used in the UK. Wegovy, real name semaglutide, has been used on the NHS for years while Mounjaro (tirzepatide) is a newer and more powerful addition to the market. Mounjaro accounts for most private prescriptions for weight loss and is set to join Wegovy as an NHS staple this year. How do they work? The jabs work by suppressing your appetite, making you eat less so your body burns fat for energy instead and you lose weight. They do this my mimicking a hormone called GLP-1, which signals to the brain when the stomach is full, so the drugs are officially called GLP-1 receptor agonists. They slow down digestion and increase insulin production, lowering blood sugar, which is why they were first developed to treat type 2 diabetes in which patients' sugar levels are too high. Can I get them? NHS prescriptions of weight loss drugs, mainly Wegovy and an older version called Saxenda (chemical name liraglutide), are controlled through specialist weight loss clinics. Typically a patient will have to have a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher, classifying them as medically obese, and also have a weight-related health condition such as high blood pressure. GPs generally do not prescribe the drugs for weight loss. Private prescribers offer the jabs, most commonly Mounjaro, to anyone who is obese (BMI of 30+) or overweight (BMI 25-30) with a weight-related health risk. Private pharmacies have been rapped for handing them out too easily and video calls or face-to-face appointments are now mandatory to check a patient is being truthful about their size and health. Are there any risks? Yes – side effects are common but most are relatively mild. Around half of people taking the drug experience gut issues, including sickness, bloating, acid reflux, constipation and diarrhoea. Dr Sarah Jarvis, GP and clinical consultant at said: 'One of the more uncommon side effects is severe acute pancreatitis, which is extremely painful and happens to one in 500 people.' Other uncommon side effects include altered taste, kidney problems, allergic reactions, gallbladder problems and hypoglycemia. Evidence has so far been inconclusive about whether the injections are damaging to patients' mental health. Figures obtained by The Sun show that, up to January 2025, 85 patient deaths in the UK were suspected to be linked to the medicines.


BBC News
32 minutes ago
- BBC News
Listen to In Conversation with Clive Eakin
BBC Radio CWR's Coventry City commentator Clive Eakin is hanging up his headset after 24 Eakin as he reflects back on a long career as the voice of the Sky Blues at 18:00 BST on BBC Radio CWR or online with BBC Sounds on to miss it? Don't panic. The episode will be available shortly after broadcast right here on the BBC website.