Talk:Donald Sinclair (hotel owner)

Proposal: Remove Notability Notice from Article

The article has a notice at the top of it: "The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's general notability guideline. Please help to establish notability by adding reliable, secondary sources about the topic." I think that notice should be reviewed in consideration of removing. Nearly ever sentence has one or more quoted sources. I have to say that I browsed to the article, as part of research while preparing for a holiday in Torquay... I found it very informative and am very pleased I read it. I really hope it will not be removed: it's a good article! 88.96.159.86 (talk) 16:32, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Reaction?

It would be most illuminating if Sinclair's reaction to the program based on him were included in the article. - It would indeed be most illuminating, but perhaps his personal reaction is not included because he has never given one publicly. 88.96.159.86 (talk) 16:32, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

I vaguely recall reading an article many years ago (can't recall which publication) where Donald Sinclair was quoted as admitting "Well, John Cleese did stay in our hotel, and I suppose it's possible I may have been a bit on the brusque side. This Basil Fawlty character must be based on me." Muzilon (talk) 00:31, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Rucksacks?

According to several sources it wasn't a rucksack but an attache that was deposited beyond the garden wall. Monte Python participants, especially the main such, were not about to carry rucksacks around anyway. Please correct this.

Idle goes into some detail in Monty Python: Almost the Truth (The Lawyer's Cut). Sinclair's widow denies the bag and wall story, as she should. Much less dramatic than the retelling, ammended. MartinSFSA (talk) 15:47, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Inaccuracy about place of death?

According to the Fawlty Towers main article, Mr. Sinclair never left Torquay and didn't emigrate to Canada. -Mfree 17:58, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Contradiction on family

The main article states that the daughters say the rendition was accurate, as opposed to this article. --Liberlogos 09:09, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I've removed the contradiction by removing the uncited information (in the main article, which has the daughters saying it was accurate). I've also moved the detail all to this article, so that hopefully the contradictioj won't happen again. Rocksong 01:54, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Do not merge this with a TV show

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Do not merge --KarlB (talk) 05:50, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

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Donald Sinclair was a real life person. He was not a character in a TV show.--Toddy1 (talk) 07:31, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I disagree. The real Donald Sinclair is only known for his caricatured depiction as Basil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers. There is very little about the man that is unrelated to Fawlty Towers, making him otherwise fairly non-notable. – PeeJay 11:02, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree with PeeJay! The story of Donald Sinclair is helpful to the understanding of the TV series. Further, had there not been a "Fawlty Towers" TV series, would Donald Sinclair be mentioned anywhere on Wikipeadia? I very much doubt it. Albert Isaacs (talk) 23:21, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Well there would not be an article on Ann Frank, if the Nazi Party had not been in power in Germany. So should we merge the article on Ann Frank with that on the Nazis?

The Sinclair family POV is as follows:

• When the Monty Python cast stayed at Gleneagles: "The entire cast behaved so badly it defied belief."
• John Cleese was an "utter fool" who had "made millions out of our unhappiness".
• Thanks to Cleese and other members of the Python cast, Mr Sinclair was "turned into a laughing stock" and the Sinclair family held up to ridicule.

Source: Daily Telegraph, Beatrice Sinclair's obituary.

To merge the article on Mr Sinclair, with Fawlty Towers is to adopt the POV of Cleese and other Monty Python cast members, who clearly hated Mr and Mrs Sinclair for some reason. Wikipedia has a policy of neutral POV, that is why we will not be merging the article on Ann Frank with the article on the Nazi Party that ruined her life, and why we should not be merging the article on Mr Sinclair, with that on the Mr Cleese's creation, which caused the Sinclair family so much unhappiness..--Toddy1 (talk) 14:24, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I would oppose merging this article with the Fawlty Towers article for the reasons Toddy1 has illustrated above. —Cliftonian (talk) 01:01, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Cliftonian and would oppose the merging, for the reasons stated by Toddy1 and because the article would have to be savagely cut down if that happened as, for example, Sinclair's wartime career is entirely irrelevant to an article on Fawlty Towers. Though I must declare in interest as I was the one who expanded the article and added that content.Catsmeat (talk) 12:05, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Oppose merge Many of the extensive and useful biographical details of Sinclair's life would have no place in the Fawlty Towers article and would be lost in a merge. This article stands in its own right as a usefully informative narrative of Sinclair and I see no sense in merging it as it has its own distinct raison d'être as an independent article. — O'Dea (talk) 12:56, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Date and place of birth

FreeBMD lists only three people named Donald Sinclair registered in 1909: two in June (Donald, in Whitchurch; Donald Jarran, in Swansea) and one in December (Donald Alan F, in Darlington). So date of birth and/or birth name may be different. Martinevans123 (talk) 11:02, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

Is there no (even unreliable) source for date of birth? Where did the date of 10 July 1909 even come from? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 08:11, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

There are family trees on Ancestry.com which indicate he was born in Ireland as William Donald Sinclair. That seems to be confirmed by the Dublin birth index. Muzilon (talk) 23:57, 16 October 2023 (UTC)