The BBC paid Andrew Sachs £700 after he suffered burns during filming of “The Germans.”
The injury happened during the kitchen-fire sequence, in which Sachs’s character Manuel tries to deal with the blaze. Firefighters were on standby for the flames, but chemicals were added to Sachs’s arm in a later shot to create smoke. The substances soaked through his clothing during rehearsal and filming, causing second-degree chemical burns to his arm and back.
The BBC subsequently paid Sachs damages worth £700. This was compensation for the on-set injury, not a performance fee or a payment connected with the episode’s later popularity. The incident is often remembered because the sitcom’s physical comedy occasionally involved real production risks behind the carefully staged farce.
“The Germans” was first broadcast in 1975 and became one of Fawlty Towers’ best-known episodes. Sachs later became inseparable from Manuel, the Spanish waiter, but the burns incident is a separate production story rather than part of Manuel’s fictional plot.