John Cleese said in an interview recently that he was more confident about adapting his classic sitcom Fawlty Towers for the stage “than about almost anything I’ve ever done.” It is, after all, a tried and tested quantity, based on one of the most popular and successful sitcoms ever made. The stage version, an amalgamation of three classic episodes, is highly true to the original, with the scripts largely unaltered. The actors, likewise, have incredibly managed to capture the look, vocal quirks, and mannerisms of the original characters almost down to a tee. Almost, but, of course, not quite. And there is the rub. It is hard to avoid, at times, yearning for the real McCoy: but that is surely unavoidable in such an enterprise.

One difference from the original is that there is more use of physical humour, deftly deployed by Adam Eliot (Basil Fawlty) and Hemi Yeroham (Manuel) in particular. Fawlty’s desperate attempts to open a bottle of wine, Manuel’s exaggerated gestures of incomprehension, and numerous outbursts of despair, incredulity and exasperation - are all hammed up to magnificent effect. My mum can’t watch John Cleese because she says it’s too stressful, and Eliot channels that hi-intensity uptightness with frenetic brilliance.

With Cleese’s recent foray into the culture wars I wondered whether a few references - or at least provocations - on the theme might make an appearance. But - aside from a neat bit of chronological symmetry with Fawlty’s references to Britain recently joining the European Union - he seems to have largely avoided the temptation. It is ironic that Cleese has been so vehement in his denunciation of supposed ‘woke’ culture in comedy, as he could arguably be seen as one of its first ambassadors. In 1996 he joined the likes of Benjamin Zephaniah and Gus John in turning down a CBE (on the grounds that he doesn’t require validation from the establishment). But decades before that, he had already founded the Secret Policeman’s Ball to raise funds for that most liberal of campaign groups, Amnesty International.

‘Woke,’ of course, simply means ‘awake’ to the way in which social hierarchies - such as class prejudice, for example - are played out in everyday life. “What is a ‘woke’ joke?” Cleese recently asked, before declaring such a thing impossible. Yet the whole premise of Fawlty Towers is the ridiculing of Fawlty’s snobbish ‘punching down’ towards those he deems his cultural inferiors. That is to say: the entire series could be seen as a ‘woke joke’.

Yet, as with so much satire, it is a double-edged sword. Whilst we are indeed invited to laugh at Basil’s class chauvinism, misogyny towards his wife, and vindictive racism to his staff, we simultaneously also get to enjoy it. Basil Fawlty represents the worst type of Englishman: sneering at everyone except those he believes to be his social ‘betters’, to whom he is utterly fawning and obsequious, he is essentially a servile, bullying coward. Yet, like David Brent, people seem to love him as much as they laugh at him. He is - perhaps like the best comedy characters - our shadow self, the part we disown because we know it to be unacceptable - yet, secretly still identify with. It is telling, and somewhat disturbing, that the first round of applause tonight, is for him giving Manuel a slap round the head. Strange lot, the English.