Reclusive Connie Booth will 'sneak in' to watch the Fawlty Towers stage show when it launches in the West End

John Cleese’s ex-wife Connie Booth says she is ‘looking forward’ to a new stage production of the iconic TV sitcom Fawlty Towers - but will be keeping a low profile when it launches in the West End.

Connie, who co-wrote the series with the Basil Fawlty star, is planning to sneak in to watch the brand new stage show featuring Torquay’s most chaotic hotel with other members of the audience.

Her second husband, renowned American theatre critic John Lahr, told MailOnline: ‘She’ll be going to see it - probably not on opening night but she’ll be there.’

The American actress declined to comment about the new production, with Lahr adding: ‘I understand people are interested - why wouldn’t they be? Connie is not giving interviews. She doesn’t generally do it anymore.’

A source added: ’She is looking forward to seeing it but she likes to keep a low profile these days and stay very much out of the limelight.'

John Cleese ’s ex-wife Connie Booth says she is ‘looking forward’ to a new stage production of the iconic TV sitcom Fawlty Towers - but will be keeping a low profile when it launches 

Connie, who co-wrote the series, is planning to sneak in to watch the brand new stage show featuring Torquay’s most chaotic hotel with other members of the audience (pictured in 2017)

Connie, 83, married comedy legend Cleese in 1968 and the couple went on to write the TV series, which was named the greatest British sitcom of all time in a 2019 Radio Times poll.

The couple, who have a grown-up daughter Cynthia, divorced in 1978 before the second and final series of the BBC2 show was screened the following year.

American actress Connie, who played chambermaid Polly in the series, quit the industry in 1995 and went on to work as a psychotherapist until her retirement.

She lives quietly in a £2.5 million terraced home in north London with second husband, a former acclaimed critic for The New Yorker and son of American actor Bert Lahr who played the Cowardly Lion in the iconic Hollywood movie The Wizard of Oz.

Cleese, 84, has adapted three of his favourite episodes of the programme for the new production which opens at the Apollo Theatre in the West End on Saturday (May 4).

He says he has ‘written one huge finale, which will bring together the endings of all three episodes’.

Connie is given a joint credit as having co-written the TV series the new play is adapted from. 

The theatre production stars Adam Jackson-Smith as the inimitable Basil, while Anna-Jane Casey takes on the role of Basil’s long-suffering wife Sybil, who is played in the series by Prunella Scales.

Left to right: Connie Booth as Polly, John Cleese as Basil Fawlty, Prunella Scales as Sybil Fawlty and Andrew Sachs (kneeling) as hapless Spanish waiter Manuel in a promotional shot 

The former co-stars recreated the shot after reuniting at a Fawlty Towers event in 2009  

Victoria Fox will play Polly while singer and actor Paul Nicholas, who starred in BBC sitcom Just Good Friends and will play the bumbling Major Cleese, added of the new production: ‘What a thrill to be bringing Fawlty Towers to the West End for the first time - nearly 50 years since the show was first recorded, in December 1974.’

Last year Connie told how she had no idea Cleese was writing a reboot of the TV show - this time with daughter Camilla Cleese - plans to return as Basil and will star alongside Camilla, his daughter with his late second wife, American model and actress Barbara Trentham.

Connie said: ‘I’d have appreciated learning about the project from John rather than reading about it in the papers.

‘Because a previous American reboot of Fawlty Towers had failed some years ago, I was surprised that another was being planned.

'I was even more surprised to read that John intends to write and to perform in it together with his daughter Camilla.’

Connie married comedy legend Cleese in 1968. The couple welcomed daughter Cynthia (pictured with her parents) before divorcing in 1978 

But Connie is said to have wished the pair well with the revival which will be set in the Caribbean and will explore how the hapless Basil manages to navigate the modern world.

It has not been announced which channel the revival will be shown on but Cleese said last year: ‘I’m not doing it with the BBC because I won’t get the freedom.

‘I was terribly lucky before, because I was working for the BBC in the late '60s, '70s, and the beginning of the '80s.

'That was the best time because the BBC was run by people with real personalities who loved the medium and who were operating out of confidence, which was okay because there wasn’t so much competition.’