Fawlty Towers star Prunella Scales has passed away aged 93 after a years-long battle with dementia.
The renowned actress was best known for her role as the overbearing Sybil Fawlty, wife of John Cleese’s Basil, in the BBC satire Fawlty Towers.
Although the programme ran for just 12 episodes across two seasons, Prunella’s performance cemented her standing as a household name.
Her death comes just under a year after her husband, the legendary performer Timothy West, passed away aged 90.
As seen on their TV programme Great Canal Journeys, Prunella endeared themselves to millions of fans with her endurance in the face of her illness, which she was diagnosed with in 2013 after years of symptoms.
It was in 2001 that Timothy first noticed signs of his wife’s condition, when he saw her perform in a play and realised she was ‘not completely in character’.
Timothy movingly told in his 2023 memoir: ‘One thought in particular almost floored me: what if it’s Alzheimer’s?’
Prunella appeared in hundreds of television, stage, cinema, and radio productions in addition to her most well-known role.
She obtained a Bafta nomination for her performance as Queen Elizabeth II in the BBC’s 1991 TV adaptation of playwright Alan Bennett’s A Question of Attribution.
She co-starred in the movie Howards End with her son, Sam.
Additionally, she received two Olivier Award nominations for her performances in the Bennett productions Make and Break and Single Spies.
She also had a notable one-woman show, “An Evening with Queen Victoria,” which ran for over 20 years.
The star was born in Surrey in 1932. Her father, a cotton salesman, brought his family up in a rented farmhouse that had no electricity or mains water.
After attending an Eastbourne boarding school, she was awarded a scholarship to attend the Old Vic drama school.
Her first position was at the Bristol Old Vic as an assistant stage manager.
Acting roles came in abundance after that.
However, Prunella’s reputation in British comedic folklore would be solidified during her time in Fawlty Towers.
The sitcom, which told the story of hapless Basil Fawlty’s endeavours to run a hotel while being reprimanded by his shrieking wife, remains one of the country’s best-loved creations.
This is even though the programme ran for just two series, in 1975 and 1979.
Prunella told The Mail in 2000, the year that Fawlty Towers was named the greatest British TV programme in a poll: ‘It is wonderful how it has not dated.
‘I am very proud of Sybil and grateful to her. I still get the odd repeat cheque, which helps to pay for my work in the theatre.’
The star met Timothy in 1961, when they were both working on the television play She Died Young, which West later described as ‘terrible’.
Prunella later said that her future husband was ‘charming’.
‘He wore a different waistcoat every day and a variety of decoratives,’ she added.
At first, the two were merely friends because Timothy was still married to his first wife, actress Jacqueline Boyer.
Boyer, a manic depressive, left West unsure ‘what I would come home to’, he wrote in the Daily Mail in 2003.
Before their marriage failed, the couple had a daughter named Juliet.
Timothy claimed his first wife was having an affair with ‘Rodger the lodger’, while he and Scales had ended up starting to see each other romantically.
Prunella’s letters to West were revealed in Teresa Ransom’s 2005 biography.
In one, written before the actor and his wife had divorced, Scales said: ‘Rehearsing this Monday, so I suppose lunch would be possible though wildly frustrating.
‘Bless you for sweet letter… Refuse to apologise for my writing. God bless you, too. Love, I think, P.’
Timothy and his first wife decided to get a divorce in 1963, and he and Prunella married rapidly afterwards, in October that year.
They spent their honeymoon in Buckinghamshire at what Prunella later said she discovered was a ‘dirty weekend place’.
Timothy admitted that the couple used to have fierce rows, including one which led to the actor pulling out some of his wife’s hair.
Prunella then kept the clump in an envelope. ‘I felt a bit cross that she was making so much of it,’ Timothy said.
But he touchingly added: ‘Whoever is left when one of us dies will be absolutely devastated.’
On the flipside, their marriage remained romantically lively in their later years and survived even though both stars were often away for long periods due to work.
In 2000, Prunella spoke of her raunchy romantic life with her husband, saying: ‘We still have quite a lively sex life, thank you very much.
‘And it gets, you know, better as the years go by.’
The couple’s first son, Sam, was born in 1966. His birth was followed by that of his youngest son, Joseph, on New Year’s Day in 1969.
While his brother has avoided the spotlight, Sam followed in his parents’ footsteps and is now a big star in his own right.
Tragically, the last 20 years of Prunella’s life were shaped by the advance of her dementia.
Despite her sickness, she managed to work well into her later years.
And her appearance in Great Canal Journeys alongside her husband lasted for seven years, from 2014 until 2021.
West discussed his wife’s health in his biography, Pru & Me.
He said: ‘What I miss most of all, I think, is us no longer being able to share our hopes and fears with one another.
‘You can have a conversation or go to the theatre with anybody, but you cannot bare your soul to just anyone.
‘Still, my regrets are tempered by the fact that Pru is happy and knows she is loved.
‘We also have a large and caring family, plenty of friends and a house and garden that Pru feels safe in and adores. Most of all, we have each other.’
Prunella Scales was a beautiful, talented and classy lady and has now been reunited with her darling husband.
It is extremely sad that we hear of her passing, but she has left a legacy that we will continue viewing on our televisions for numerous years to come.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 