This book was commissioned for the 50th anniversary of the sitcom Fawlty Towers, and was a labour of love to write. In 2024, with the stage play making headlines, it was a very good time to revisit the show. I watched the show's twelve episodes more times than I can count, until I dreamed of lines from the script and of being sneered at by Basil in a hotel car park.

I read newspaper and magazine articles from 1975 to 2024 and all kinds of memoirs and books on television, entertained librarians at Oxford's Bodleian Library with discussion of the show (and unfortunately helped them discover gaps in their Radio Times holdings), watched all manner of historic and current TV interviews, and listened to audio recordings. My daughter, partner, and I went to see the stage play and spoke to the cast. We all recommend seeing it when it tours.

I wrote most of the book in Outertown (Orkney), and in Oxford. There may be other places to write books that don't begin with O, but I didn't seek them out. A trip to a suitably Edwardian hotel in Bournemouth between submission and editing confirmed that independent seaside hotels haven't really changed in fifty years – they even had odd half-stairs and a grandfather clock!