'I've only seen one episode of Payne and I thought what was smart was they tried to get away from doing Fawlty Towers the way we've done it. There was absolutely no point in reproducing what had already been done, so they're trying to make it something of their own.'

Talking about the negative press coverage of the series, he went on:

'Well, I thought it was rather successful, but one of the problems is the press will always write a lot about pilots and no really good series ever hits its stride until something like program five or program six. If you talk to the people on Cheers [Cleese guested on the top-rated sitcom] for example, you'll find that it was not that good or that popular in the first series. In England, when Monty Python started, the press could make neither heads nor tails of it. Nobody wrote a favorable review until I think show seven.'

'Let's see if they can make it work in a different way,' he graciously allowed, 'because, don't forget, Fawlty Towers is only ever seen by the PBS audience, which is, what, 2 to 3 per cent of the people who watch television in America. That means that 97 per cent of the people have never seen it, so they then enjoy the new series.'