Basil Fawlty

plural Basil Fawlty's

1. A self-important and obnoxious man, often a shop or hotel owner.

   Armond is the Basil Fawlty of the 21st Century! Starts like this and ends like this:

   2025 July 4, ScowlyBrowSpinster, “Armond is the Basil Fawlty of the 21st Century! Starts like this and ends like this:”, in reddit.com

   4 more examples

   Steve Bloom, of Bloomindales book shop, was dubbed the “Basil Fawlty of books” after visitors made more than 20 complaints about his behaviour to the local parish council.

   2017 July 17, Alexa Fox, “Rude bookseller dubbed the 'Basil Fawlty of books' sells his Hawes shop”, in The Northern Echo, archived from the original on 06 Aug 2026

   "There is nothing anti-European about believing that we should decide our taxes here in the House of Commons. The truth is that the right hon. Gentleman now has to ask the Germans to use a different word. He has become the Basil Fawlty of Europe. Every time he meets a German, he goes around saying 'Don't mention tax harmonisation'."

   2019, Dr. Eileen Metcalfe, The Wit and Humour of William Hague

   The following morning, I rise slightly bleary-eyed, having perhaps enjoyed a few too many wines by the glass the night before. I drive back towards Martinborough and discover the Basil Fawlty of the New Zealand wine world. Tim Coney and his wife Margaret decided to leave the big smoke of Wellington and take to the hills of Martinborough and plant a vineyard in their fifties.

   2020, Graham Mitchell, The Wine Explorer: A Guide to the Wines of the World and How to Enjoy Them, University of Buckingham Press

   By the time I left my first teaching post, I was known as the Basil Fawlty of my school, the man with the manic energy, with two briefcases and three distinct job titles. Looking back, those recurrent stomach pains at twenty-five were probably an ulcer.

   1991, John Button, The Best Of Resurgence: A Selection from the First Twenty-Five Years, Lilliput Press