A country club in Buckinghamshire that featured in Fawlty Towers has been exposed for its history of gambling, illicit encounters and crimes by a crewmember.

Despite being set by the sea in Torquay, Devon, John Cleese and Connie Booth's much-loved BBC sitcom Fawlty Towers was partially filmed in Bourne End, with the former Wooburn Grange Country Club, near Wooburn Grange junction, used for exterior shots of the titular hotel.

Far from the laughs and eccentricities of the series, grounded by Cleese's misanthropic hotel owner Basil Fawlty, Wooburn Grange had a hotbed of sleaziness and crime hidden behind its unassuming façade - or so says Tony Guyan, who acted as floor manager on the sitcom during its 1970s run.

Speaking to David Earl and Joe Wilkinson on their Chatabix podcast on Wednesday, January 10, Tony described the country club, which burned down in 1991, as the kind of place where "you could gamble (or) hire a room and take your 'secretary' for an afternoon".

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He didn't end there - Wooburn Grange was also reportedly a touchpoint for gangsters, and Tony recounted in detail one incident which had stuck in his mind while shooting on location in Buckinghamshire.

"One guy showed up in his Jaguar and was sitting in his car when (another) 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 he'd shot the wrong guy!"

Wooburn Grange Country Club was demolished, despite being a listed structure, after being irreparably damaged by a fire in 1991. The site has since been developed into residential homes.