LONDON - Actor Andrew Sachs, famed for his role as a waiter in British sitcom Fawlty Towers, has died, his wife said in a newspaper interview on Thursday.

Sachs, 86, died at a care home in London last week and was buried on Thursday after suffering from dementia for four years, the Daily Mail reported. "My heart has been broken every day for a long time," his wife Melody Sachs was quoted as saying.

The German-born actor rose to fame in the 1970s for his role as Manuel in Fawlty Towers, playing a hotel waiter alongside actor John Cleese as the proprietor.

The comedy series saw Manuel often criticised by the rude Basil Fawlty, who the BBC said was inspired by a hotel proprietor Cleese encountered.

The Spanish waiter is described as the "most loveable character" in the broadcaster's description of Fawlty Towers, which has often been re-run in the decades following its initial release.

Cleese paid tribute to Sachs in a series of posts on Twitter: "A very sweet gentle... and kind man and a truly great farceur. I first saw him in Habeas Corpus on stage in 1973. I could not have found a better Manuel. Inspired".

Sachs went on to act in a BBC radio series and appeared in children's television programmes, as well as acting in the British soap opera Coronation Street. He arrived in Britain at the age of 8, after his family fled Berlin in 1938.

-AFP