Barcelona waiter Manuel is one of Britain's best-loved comedy characters.

David Rodgers reports from HMS Torquay and from the Imperial Hotel. The hotel is hosting the Fifteenth International Gastronomic Festival and Torquay's most famous waiter is on hand to serve up some comedy. Andrew Sachs plays the iconic comedy character from TV's Fawlty Towers about the goings-on at a Torquay Hotel. Basil Fawlty took on the waiter from Barcelona who has a heavy Spanish accent to help run the hotel with cheap labour.

In real life Andrew Sachs had a very correct British accent and became a well-known narrator and popular for his many voiceovers. For Spanish audiences, Manuel was Paolo from Naples and in the region of Manuel's origin, Catalonia as well as France, Manuel was portrayed with a Mexican accent. In 1938 at the age of eight, Sachs came to Britain from Berlin with his Jewish father and Catholic mother who fled the Nazi regime. As an actor he appeared in Are You Being Served? (1977), Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978) and in Coronation Street. John Cleese who played Basil Fawlty to Andrew Sachs' Manuel led tributes to him when he died in 2016.