Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs dies aged 86

LONDON: Actor Andrew Sachs, famed for his role as a waiter in British sitcom Fawlty Towers, has died, his wife said in a newspaper interview on Thursday.

Sachs, 86, died at a care home in London last week and was buried on Thursday after suffering from dementia for four years, the Daily Mail reported.

"My heart has been broken every day for a long time," his wife Melody Sachs was quoted as saying.

The German-born actor rose to fame in the 1970s for his role as Manuel in Fawlty Towers, playing a hotel waiter alongside actor John Cleese as the proprietor.

The comedy series saw Manuel often criticised by the rude Basil Fawlty, who the BBC said was inspired by a hotel proprietor Cleese encountered.

The Spanish waiter is described as the "most loveable character" in the broadcaster´s description of Fawlty Towers, which has often been re-run in the decades following its initial release.

Cleese paid tribute to Sachs in a series of posts on Twitter: "A very sweet gentle... and kind man and a truly great farceur. I first saw him in Habeas Corpus on stage in 1973. I could not have found a better Manuel. Inspired".

Sachs went on to act in a BBC radio series and appeared in children´s television programmes, as well as acting in the British soap opera Coronation Street.

He arrived in Britain at the age of 8, after his family fled Berlin in 1938.