{"id":105784,"date":"2025-10-28T20:23:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T20:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/105784\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T20:23:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T20:23:13","slug":"prunella-scales-who-played-sybil-in-fawlty-towers-dies-aged-93","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/105784\/","title":{"rendered":"Prunella Scales, who played Sybil in Fawlty Towers, dies aged 93"},"content":{"rendered":"

Actor Prunella Scales, best known as acid-tongued Sybil Fawlty in the classic British sitcom Fawlty Towers, has died, her children said. She was 93 and had lived with dementia for many years.<\/p>\n

Scales\u2019 sons, Samuel and Joseph West, said she died \u201cpeacefully at home in London\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough dementia forced her retirement from a remarkable acting career of nearly 70 years, she continued to live at home,\u201d her sons said. \u201cShe was watching Fawlty Towers the day before she died.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scales\u2019 career included early roles in a 1952 television version of Pride and Prejudice and the 1954 film comedy Hobson\u2019s Choice, followed by her TV breakthrough starring opposite Richard Briers in Marriage Lines, a popular 1960s sitcom about a newlywed couple.<\/p>\n

In Fawlty Towers she played the exasperated wife of hapless Basil Fawlty, played by John Cleese, whose efforts to run a seaside hotel inevitably escalated into chaos. Only 12 episodes were made, in 1975 and 1979, but it is regularly cited as one of the funniest sitcoms of all time.<\/p>\n

\"<\/p>\n

John Cleese and Prunella Scales (Source: Getty)<\/p>\n

Cleese remembered Scales as \u201ca really wonderful comic actress\u201d and \u201ca very sweet lady”.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve recently been watching a number of clips of Fawlty Towers whilst researching a book,” Cleese said in a statement. “Scene after scene she was absolutely perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scales also starred as the small-town social powerhouse Elizabeth Mapp in Mapp & Lucia, a 1985 TV adaptation of E.F. Benson’s 1930s series of comic novels.<\/p>\n

Later roles included Queen Elizabeth II in A Question of Attribution, Alan Bennett\u2019s stage and TV drama about the queen\u2019s art adviser, Anthony Blunt, who was also a Soviet spy. Scales played another British monarch in the one-woman stage show An Evening with Queen Victoria.<\/p>\n

Scales was a versatile stage performer whose theatre roles ranged from Shakespeare’s comedies to the morphine-addicted matriarch Mary Tyrone in a 1991 production of Eugene O\u2019Neill\u2019s Long Day\u2019s Journey Into Night.<\/p>\n

But she remained best known for Fawlty Towers. In 2006, Scales was guest of honour at the reopening of the Gleneagles Hotel in the English seaside resort of Torquay, the establishment whose memorably rude owner had inspired Cleese to create Basil Fawlty after a stay there in the 1970s.<\/p>\n

\"Prunella<\/p>\n

Prunella Scales in 2004 (Source: Getty)<\/p>\n

Scales was diagnosed with vascular dementia in 2013. Between 2014 and 2019, she and her husband, actor Timothy West, explored waterways in Britain and abroad in the gentle travel show Great Canal Journeys. The program was praised for the way it honestly depicted Scales\u2019 dementia.<\/p>\n

West, her husband of 61 years, died in November 2024. Scales is survived by her sons, stepdaughter Juliet West, seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.<\/p>\n

The morning’s headlines in 90 seconds, including Hurricane Melissa makes landfall, the new low mortgage rate from a smaller bank, and new research into whether gluten is the dietary devil it\u2019s made out to be. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Actor Prunella Scales, best known as acid-tongued Sybil Fawlty in the classic British sitcom Fawlty Towers, has died,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":105785,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,69,417,437,1745],"class_list":{"0":"post-105784","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-television","13":"tag-tv","14":"tag-uk-europe"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}