Fawlty Towers star Andrew Sachs dies aged 86

Fawlty Towers star Andrew Sachs, who played hapless Spanish waiter Manuel in the BBC sitcom, has died aged 86, his family has confirmed.

The actor died on 23 November and was buried on Thursday, according to an interview with his wife Melody in the Daily Mail.

She revealed that he died in a care home last week after suffering from vascular dementia for four years.

“My heart has been broken every day for a long time,” she said, explaining that she had collapsed while caring for her husband. Nevertheless, she said they were happy, adding that she “never once heard him grumble”.

The condition reportedly left him wheelchair-bound and unable to speak. “It wasn’t all doom and gloom,” she said. “He still worked for two years. We were happy, we were always laughing, we never had a dull moment. He had dementia for four years and we didn’t really notice it at first until the memory started going.

“It didn’t get really bad until quite near the end. I nursed Andrew, I was there for every moment of it.

“Dementia is the most awful illness. It sneaks in in the night, when you least expect it. It took a long time for Andy’s brain to go. Even about a month before he died, he was sitting in the garden and chatting away.”

She added: “Don’t feel sorry for me because I had the best life with him. I had the best husband and we really loved each other ... We were married for 57 years, we loved each other very deeply and it was a pleasure looking after him. I miss him terribly.”

Sachs became a household name in the UK as Manuel in the 1970s sitcom. He would go on to play Ramsay Clegg in Coronation Street in 2009, but he slipped from public life as his illness took hold.

On his role of Manuel, Sachs had told the BBC in 2014: "It was just a part I was playing and people seemed to laugh."

Manuel was one of the most imitated comedy characters of the 1970s. The waiter, who famously hailed from Barcelona, often said little more than the word "Que?" to generate laughs, but arguably his most famous line was "I know nothing".