{"id":149867,"date":"2025-10-28T16:31:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T16:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/149867\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T16:31:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T16:31:10","slug":"prunella-scales-as-sybil-fawlty-is-immortal-but-she-enjoyed-a-distinguished-acting-career-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/149867\/","title":{"rendered":"Prunella Scales as Sybil Fawlty is immortal, but she enjoyed a distinguished acting career \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI never really felt ready to go on Fawlty Towers,\u201d Prunella Scales<\/a> said way back in 1995. \u201cDo you think I\u2019m still lumbered with that show?\u201d<\/p>\n

Another 30 years have passed and, yes, it does seem that Scales, who has died in London<\/a> at the age of 93, was doomed to be \u201clumbered\u201d with a situation comedy that first emerged when Harold Wilson was the British prime minister.<\/p>\n

This is not to suggest the obituarists have little else to celebrate. Her distinguished theatre career began as long ago as 1951 when she took a job as stage manager at the Bristol Old Vic (a common first step for hopeful actors). She had a strong early film role opposite Charles Laughton in David Lean\u2019s Hobson\u2019s Choice. She toured in Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream in the 1950s. <\/p>\n

Mainstream success came when she was cast opposite Richard Briers in the sitcom The Marriage Lines. In the 1990s she received acclaim \u2013 and a Bafta nomination \u2013 for playing Queen Elizabeth II in Alan Bennett\u2019s sly A Question of Attribution at the British National Theatre and in a BBC<\/a> adaptation. <\/p>\n

More recently Great Canal Journeys, in which she travelled the waterways with husband and fellow actor Timothy West, was a delight on Channel 4<\/a>. \u201cShe was \u2026 a stage actor of vast experience whose career was defined by a natural gift for comedy,\u201d Michael Billington, the Guardian\u2019s veteran theatre critic, noted on her death. <\/p>\n

But, as Scales predicted, there was no getting away from Sybil Fawlty. First seen almost exactly 50 years ago in A Touch of Class \u2013 the episode that has hotelier Basil Fawlty fawning over a toff who turns out to be a con man \u2013 she immediately emerged as a harridan for the ages. <\/p>\n

When John Cleese<\/a>, who wrote the series with Connie Booth, first told his old chums in Monty Python he was writing a sitcom set in a hotel, a few were snitty about the project. It sounded a bit too clich\u00e9d. Indeed, the marriage between the hopeless Basil, played by Cleese in a state of permanent fury, and the fearsome Sybil, forever rolling her eyes in dismay, played out tropes common to dozens of contemporaneous comedies. Those couples, like the Fawltys, almost never have children. The husband makes the most of his tiny professional authority. The wife is an uncompromising nag. Scales was a little puzzled. \u201cWhy did they get married?\u201d she asked Cleese on reading the first scripts. \u201cOh God, I knew you\u2019d ask that,\u201d he replied. She can \u201ckill a man at 10 paces with one blow of her tongue\u201d Basil claims in The Builders. She is \u201cmy little Kommandant\u201d. She is \u201cmy little piranha fish\u201d. She is \u201cmy little nest of vipers\u201d.<\/p>\n

Yet the sceptical Pythons were proven wrong. Fawlty Towers may have the shape of a traditional sitcom, but it had the invention and emotional truth of a farce by Moli\u00e8re. There was nothing lazy about the spiky energy Scales brought to Sybil. Cleese and Booth were careful never to sentimentalise, but they did allow a degree of sympathy for Sybil in her despairing efforts to manage a monster. Recall her sadness when she thinks Basil has forgotten their wedding anniversary. <\/p>\n

\"SamSam West with his father Timothy West and his mother Prunella Scales in 1999. Photograph: Michael Crabtree\/PA Wire <\/p>\n

It is no great stretch to suggest that Fawlty Towers \u2013 crumbling, inefficient, suspicious of strangers \u2013 is a metaphor for England (if not quite the UK) as an economic and social basket case. Basil is the romantic imperialist. Sybil, who disdains his snobbery \u2013 see Gourmet Night in particular \u2013 in favour of cold commercialism is considerably more hard headed. Dare we mention that Margaret Thatcher<\/a> became leader of the opposition a few months before the first episode? Sybil, who seems to be from a more humble background than her husband, stands in for the provincial strivers the future prime minister claimed to represent. She also shared some of Thatcher\u2019s abrasiveness (though Sybil had a better sense of humour).<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Fawlty Towers actor Prunella Scales dies aged 93Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Scales, born in Surrey to a mother who had attended Rada, remained a much-loved personality for the rest of her busy career. She and West, whom she married in 1963 and who predeceased her by a year, became something of an institution. Their son, Sam West, grew to be a successful actor in his own right. The couple\u2019s later appearances on Great Canal Journeys allowed them to engage with Scales\u2019s developing dementia in a fashion that was helpful to those facing similar difficulties. <\/p>\n

\u201cI am famous for playing unfortunate wives, but I have been a very lucky wife,\u201d she told the Guardian in 2013. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI never really felt ready to go on Fawlty Towers,\u201d Prunella Scales said way back in 1995. \u201cDo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[265],"tags":[18,117,87903,19,17,87905,88057,128],"class_list":{"0":"post-149867","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-fawlty-towers","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-prunella-scales","14":"tag-sybil-fawlty","15":"tag-tv"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115452752000129569","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}