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British actress Prunella Scales, best known for playing Sybil Fawlty in beloved British television comedy Fawlty Towers, has died age 93, her sons have said in a statement. Sybil was the wife of John Cleese's Basil Fawlty, in the show's two series made in 1975 and 1979. Set in a dysfunctional hotel in the seaside resort of Torquay, it became one of Britain's best-known comedies and was shown around the world. It continues to be broadcast and referenced in popular culture today. "Our darling mother Prunella Scales died peacefully at home in London yesterday," the statement from her two sons said on Tuesday. Scales was married for 61 years to actor Timothy West, who died last November. She was diagnosed with vascular dementia in 2013, but continued to work for several years. Fawlty Towers was named as the greatest ever British TV sitcom by the Radio Times magazine in 2019. It was developed into a theatre production in Australia in 2016, before moving to London's West End in 2024. In the show, Sybil was often on the phone saying "Ooooh I knoooow", her braying laugh described by Basil's character as akin to "someone machine-gunning a seal". Her seven-decade acting career included multiple roles from the 1950s, including in 1960s sitcom Marriage Lines. Scales also played Queen Elizabeth II in the British film A Question Of Attribution as well as appearing in a one-woman show called An Evening With Queen Victoria. She starred in the 1992 Oscar-winning film Howards End alongside her son, actor Samuel West. In the 2010s, Scales and her husband 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' dementia. She was born in Surrey in 1932 and started her acting career at The Old Vic Theatre School in Bristol. She is survived by two sons, and a stepdaughter, as well as seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Reuters/AFP
