THE real hotel used in Fawlty Towers was a den of sex, gambling and gangsters, a TV boss says.

Wooburn Grange Country Club was used for exterior shots in the 1970s sitcom about erratic hotelier Basil Fawlty, played by John Cleese.

But it was far from a genteel retreat in Torquay, according to the show’s floor manager Tony Guyan.

Instead, he said it was where “you could gamble, hire a room, and take your ‘secretary’ for an afternoon”.

He added: “One guy turned up in his Jaguar and was sitting in his car when a guy stepped out of the bushes with a sawn-off shotgun and blew his head off.

“He was a hitman hired to top someone, but they found out he’d killed the wrong guy.”

Recalling one meeting to discuss filming, he said: “The boardroom table is about 12ft long, and piled 3ft high with 50s, 20s, 10s, five and 10 shilling notes. Huge pile of money.

“I stood with my back hard against the wall because I didn’t want him to think I’d taken a couple of handfuls. It was well dodgy.”

He also said a crew member once saw a guest drop a gambling chip.

When he handed it to him he was told to keep it. “It was ten grand,” Tony told the Chatabix podcast.

The club, in Bourne End, Bucks, burnt down in 1991.