He made his name on British television and found his greatest fame for his portrayal of the comical Spanish waiter Manuel in Fawlty Towers.

[7] In the late 1950s, while still studying shipping management at college, Sachs worked on radio productions, including Private Dreams and Public Nightmares by Frederick Bradnum, an early experimental programme made by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

He began in acting with repertory theatre and made his West End debut as Grobchick in the 1958 production of the Whitehall farce Simple Spymen.

[16] In 1981, at the urging of Elton John, "Manuel" released a cover version of Joe Dolce's worldwide hit "Shaddap You Face", with "Waiter, there's a Flea in my Soup" on the B side.

He was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1980, when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews while making a personal appearance as Manuel at the HMV store on London's Oxford Street.

[citation needed] Sachs, who had himself experienced life as a 'foreigner' in Britain, denied allegations that the character was based on racist stereotypes, arguing that Manuel could have been any 'foreign' worker.

[18] During the shooting of the Fawlty Towers episode "The Germans", Sachs was left with second degree acid burns due to a fire stunt.

[24] He also did voices for children's animation, including William's Wish Wellingtons,[25] Starhill Ponies,[26] The Gingerbread Man,[27] Little Grey Rabbit,[28] The Forgotten Toys,[29] Asterix and the Big Fight.

[34] Although no other role gained him the same attention as Manuel, Sachs continued to star in a range of productions, both comedic and dramatic.

[38] In 1997, Sachs played opposite Shane Richie in Chris Barfoot's Dead Clean:[39] in a tale of mistaken identity, Sachs plays airport window cleaner Kostas Malmatakis who is hired to assassinate a businessman by his greedy partner (Mark Chapman); the British short won a Gold Remi at the Houston Worldfest in 2001.

[41] In 2005 Sachs served as the performer for the audiobook version of Urchin of the Riding Stars, the first book of The Mistmantle Chronicles.

[42] He would later appear in another Adams adaptation as the Book in the live tour of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy during its run at Bromley's Churchill Theatre.

[46] Sachs toured with the Australian pianist Victor Sangiorgio in a two-man show called "Life after Fawlty", which included Richard Strauss's voice and piano setting of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem "Enoch Arden".

[51] In 1978, BBC Radio 4 broadcast The Revenge, a ground-breaking 30-minute play totally without dialogue (an experiment in binaural stereo recording), written and performed by Sachs.

[52] Made in Heaven, which had starred Sachs's future Fawlty Towers co-star Prunella Scales when produced for radio in 1971, was brought to the stage in 1975.

"[14] On 25 October 2008, the BBC apologised to Sachs and his agent after they had been informed that Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross had made several obscene phone calls to him during an episode of The Russell Brand Show recorded on 16 October and broadcast two days later, on which Sachs had agreed to appear.

[54] Both presenters had left explicit messages on Sachs's telephone answering machine stating that Brand had sex with his granddaughter, Georgina Baillie.

[55] Gordon Brown, the then Prime Minister, criticised Ross and Brand's actions, saying that it was "clearly inappropriate and unacceptable behaviour", and the television watchdog, Ofcom, launched an inquiry into the matter.