Fawlty Towers actor Prunella Scales dies at 93 | television

Actress Prunella Scales, best known for her role as Sybil Fawlty in the classic comedy series Fawlty Towers, has died at the age of 93.

Scales, who was married to fellow actor Timothy West, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2013.

Her sons, Samuel and Joseph, said that the actress died peacefully at her home in London on Monday.

A statement to PA Media said: “Our dear mother Prunella Scales passed away peacefully at her home in London yesterday. She was 93 years old.

“Although dementia forced her to retire from a brilliant acting career that lasted nearly 70 years, she continued to live at home. She was watching Fawlty Towers the day before she died. Prue was married to Timothy West for 61 years. He died in November 2024.

“She is survived by two sons, one daughter, seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

“We would like to thank everyone who provided Prue with such wonderful end-of-life care: her final days were comfortable, content and surrounded by love.”

Scales, who was born in Surrey in 1932, began her career as assistant stage manager at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre, having studied at the associated drama school. Her mother, Catherine, was an actress, and her father, John, was a cotton salesman who loved the theater. “Acting was always up in the air,” she told The Guardian in 2009. “But when I got to Bristol Old Vic, my manager wrote to the director and said: ‘Are you sure this girl should be an actress?’” “We wanted her to try Cambridge.” Naturally, this was used as a stick to beat me with throughout my training.

After a number of film roles, including the now-lost second screen version of Pride and Prejudice from 1952, Scales broke into the mainstream in the television sitcom The Marriage Lines, broadcast in the early 1960s, starring alongside Richard Briers. As well as roles in the BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Rumpole of the Bailey and Mapp and Lucia on television, Scales is best known for playing Sybil Fawlty in the John Cleese and Connie Booth-penned sitcom Fawlty Towers, in which she appeared between 1975 and 1979. In it, Scales played the controlling role of Sybil, the wife of the incompetent head of the Gueliz Hotel, Basil.

Scales also portrayed Queen Elizabeth II in Alan Bennett’s film The Question of Attribution – for which she received a BAFTA Award nomination in 1992 – and appeared in advertisements for the supermarket chain Tesco for 10 years from 1995, playing the demanding shopper, Dottie.

Between 2014 and 2019, Scales and West led Channel 4’s Grand Canal Cruises, which followed the pair on a series of canal and narrowboat cruises across the UK and Europe, and later further afield. In the last series of the programme, West said that Scales’ condition had worsened recently, and that she had also lost her hearing.