Actor Prunella Scales, best known as acid-tongued Sybil Fawlty in the classic British comedy Fawlty Towers, has died, her children said Tuesday. She was 93 and had dementia.
Scales’s sons, Samuel and Joseph West, said she died “peacefully at home in London” on Monday.
“Although dementia forced her retirement from a remarkable acting career of nearly 70 years, she continued to live at home,” her sons said. “She was watching Fawlty Towers the day before she died.”
Scales’s career included early film roles in a 1952 version of Pride and Prejudice and the 1954 comedy Hobson’s Choice, followed by a television turn in the 1960s sitcom Marriage Lines.
In Fawlty Towers, she played the exasperated but domineering wife of hapless Basil Fawlty, played by John Cleese, whose efforts to run a seaside hotel inevitably escalated into chaos.
The show was created by Cleese, known to audiences by the then from sketch comedy show Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and his then-wife Connie Booth. She played one of the harried staff members of the inn, Polly, while Andrew Sachs — who died in 2016 — played Spanish waiter Manuel.
Only 12 episodes were made, in 1975 and 1979, but it is regularly cited as one of the funniest sitcoms and greatest British shows of all time.
Fawlty Towers was later adapted for the stage, including a production that hit London’s famed West End last year.
Cleese on Tuesday remembered Scales as “a really wonderful comic actress” and “a very sweet lady.”
“I’ve 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.”
The television series aired on BBC Two. Jon Petrie, director of BBC Comedy, paid tribute to Scales in a statement on Tuesday.
“She was a national treasure whose brilliance as Sybil Fawlty lit up screens and still makes us laugh today,” said Petrie. “We send our love and condolences to her family and friends.”
Royal portrayals
Scales’s later roles included Queen Elizabeth II in A Question of Attribution, Alan Bennett’s stage and TV drama about the queen’s 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.
Scales was married for 61 years to actor Timothy West, who died of natural causes at age 90 in November 2024. West, who portrayed the titular Shakespearean roles of Hamlet, King Lear and Macbeth on stage, also had recurring roles on U.K. television soaps Coronation Street and Eastenders.
Scales was diagnosed with vascular dementia in 2013. Between 2014 and 2019, she and 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’s dementia.
Son Samuel West has also been an actor and theatre director.
Scales is survived by her sons, stepdaughter Juliet West, seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
