View Full Version : R.I.P. Prunella Scales


icecream
10-28-2025, 01:41 PM
She is best known for playing Sybil Fawlty on Fawlty Towers.

https://www.tvline.com/2009585/prunella-scales-dead-cause-of-death-fawlty-towers-sybil-obituary/

Alan Brady's Hair
10-28-2025, 05:35 PM
Bazzle!!!

RIP

TMC
10-28-2025, 06:20 PM
Prunella Scales, Fawlty Towers star, dies at 93 (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/28/arts/television/prunella-scales-dead.html)

Scales, the British actress best known for her role as Sybil Fawlty (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60WVDnfY-_w), the unflappable foil to her hotheaded husband, Basil, played by John Cleese, died Monday at her home in London. No cause was released, but Scales was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2014. “She was watching Fawlty Towers the day before she died,” her sons said in a statement. “In Fawlty Towers, which aired on BBC Two in 1975 and 1979 and later on PBS, Ms. Scales elevated the character of exasperated spouse to a new level,” Natasha King writes in Scales’ New York Times obituary. “Starring opposite John Cleese, who played the high-strung manager of a dysfunctional seaside hotel, Ms. Scales was his elaborately coiffed and impeccably dressed wife who stood as a picture of eye-rolling calm as farce unfolded around her. She was often found smoking in a back room while on the telephone with a friend, her gossiping frequently punctuated with a drawling ‘Oh, I know!’ Confronted with her husband’s shenanigans, she cut him down to size with a withering look or a short, sharp ‘BASIL!’ — no mean feat for the petite 5-foot-3 Ms. Scales facing the 6-foot-5 Mr. Cleese. Some of Basil’s favorite epithets for his wife included “my little piranha fish” and “my little nest of vipers,” and he likened her braying laugh to ‘someone machine-gunning a seal.’ She often responded in kind: ‘Do you really imagine, even in your wildest dreams, that a girl like this could possibly be interested in an aging, brilliantined stick insect like you?” she admonished when she caught him in the closet of an attractive guest’s room.” Scales was also best known for co-hosting Channel 4’s Great Canal Journeys (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zRI7xwN_mU) with her husband Timothy West. In a statement, John Cleese paid tribute to Prunella Scales (https://deadline.com/2025/10/john-cleese-remembers-prunella-scales-fawlty-towers-1236599969/), calling his on-screen wife in the BBC sitcom as “a really wonderful comic actress,” and added: “Scene after scene she was absolutely perfect.”

Dude111
10-29-2025, 12:24 AM
Very sad :(