Actor Prunella Scales, best known for playing the sharp-tongued Sybil Fawlty in the classic sitcom Fawlty Towers, has died at the age of 93.
Her family said the beloved actress died peacefully at her home in London on Monday. Her sons, Samuel and Joseph West, said she had spent the previous day watching Fawlty Towers.
“Our darling mother Prunella Scales died peacefully at home in London yesterday,” they said in a statement. “Although dementia forced her retirement from a remarkable acting career of nearly 70 years, she continued to live at home surrounded by love.”
Scales had been living with vascular dementia since 2013. Her husband, actor Timothy West, died last November. She is survived by her two sons, a stepdaughter, seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
The making of Sybil Fawlty
Scales became a household name for her portrayal of Sybil Fawlty, the formidable hotel manager in the BBC’s Fawlty Towers (1975–79). Her cutting wit, quick temper and distinctive laugh made Sybil one of British television’s most enduring comedy characters.
She starred opposite John Cleese, who played her exasperated husband Basil. Paying tribute, Cleese described her as “a really wonderful comic actress” who was “absolutely perfect, scene after scene.”
“She was a very sweet lady who spent a lot of her life apologising,” Cleese added. “I used to tease her about it. I was very, very fond of her.”
BBC comedy director Jon Petrie called her “a national treasure whose brilliance as Sybil Fawlty still makes us laugh today.”
A life in acting
Born in 1932, Scales began her career on stage and radio, finding early success in the 1960s sitcom Marriage Lines. She went on to appear in numerous theatre and television productions, including After Henry, A Question of Attribution — for which she earned a BAFTA nomination — and The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne.
In later years, she appeared alongside her husband in Channel 4’s Great Canal Journeys, a gentle travel series that won her a new generation of admirers. Despite her dementia diagnosis, she continued filming until 2019.
West once said the couple’s 60-year marriage had been defined by laughter and resilience. “We were good at it,” he told the BBC last year.
Tributes from the stage and beyond
West End theatres will dim their lights for two minutes at 7pm on Thursday in her memory. Hannah Essex, co-chief executive of the Society of London Theatre, praised Scales as “an artist of precision, wit and generosity who made an indelible mark.”
Corinne Mills of Alzheimer’s Society called her “an inspiration” who had “shone an important light on living with dementia.”
BBC One will air The Builders, a 1975 episode of Fawlty Towers, on Tuesday night in tribute to the actress whose talent defined one of Britain’s greatest sitcoms.
