Sachs: Messages scandal 'in the past'
Andrew Sachs said today that last autumn’s obscene messages scandal was “in the past”, and he bore no resentment over the affair.
Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross left a series of lewd messages on the 'Fawlty Towers' actor’s answering machine while recording Brand’s Radio 2 show.
The two presenters said Brand had slept with Sachs’ granddaughter, Georgina Baillie, 23, and joked that Sachs might kill himself.
The ensuing public outcry saw 33-year-old Brand quit the station and Ross suspended from the airwaves for 12 weeks without pay.
In an interview with the Radio Times, Sachs, 79, said he thought the incident provoked a strong reaction because the public felt it was really Manuel, his 'Fawlty Towers' persona, that Brand and Ross were talking about, but he said he had moved on from the scandal.
“It’s in the past. It takes a lot to upset me and I can’t bear resentments. It’s a waste of time,” he said.
But he said the affair had caused a certain amount of tension within his family.
“We’re very close to my daughter (Kate), who is Georgina’s mother,” he told the magazine.
“It must be difficult for Kate, because she must feel stuck in the middle. We haven’t really discussed it. If there’s ever a right time, I’ll ask her what she feels about it. It’s up to her.”
Sachs, who left Berlin for the UK with his family in 1938, said he vividly remembered the colours and flags of Nazi marches.
“Had I stayed there and had I not been half-Jewish, I would have been enlisted in the Hitler Youth, I suppose,” he said.
“Even when my father was arrested – although he later returned – I saw things from a child’s point of view. It’s useful for an actor to have something of the child in him.”
:: The full interview appears in this week’s Radio Times in the UK.
