Prunella Scales: From the Iconic Fawlty Towers to Remarkable Canal Adventures

The celebrated actress Prunella Scales, who died at the age of 93, was regarded as among Britain's most brilliant comic actors.

Despite a long and distinguished career on stage and screen, her legacy will forever be linked as Sybil Fawlty in the 1970s TV comedy, Fawlty Towers.

It was Sybil's mission throughout her existence to keep tabs on her husband Basil described as a "stick insect" - played by comedian John Cleese - amid cigarette-fuelled phone conversations with her friend, Audrey.

She was tasked to calm visitors who had been shouted at, completely overlooked or, occasionally, throttled by Basil when in one of his more manic moods.

Her unforgettable cackle, extraordinary hairstyle and ferocious temper were part of a carefully constructed character that ranks as a humorous triumph.

Although many actors would have distanced themselves from excessive identification with a single role, Scales consistently voiced her pleasure in participating of the Fawlty Towers experience.

Formative Years and Professional Start

The actress born Prunella Margaret Rumney Illingworth was born in the Guildford area on 22 June 1932.

It was a family profoundly passionate about the theatre - her mother being, Catherine Scales, an ex-actress who'd abandoned her career for marriage and children.

Intelligent and studious, after wartime evacuation to the Lake District, Prunella studied at Moira House Girls School in the coastal town of Eastbourne.

In 1949, she won a scholarship to the Old Vic Theatre School and - two years later - secured a position as a stage management assistant.

This was to the fury of her former headmistress in Eastbourne, who had wished she would seek admission to Cambridge and wrote to the theatre to tell them so.

At drama school, Scales had been thought of as a developing character performer rather than an obvious Juliet.

"We all wanted to look like Audrey Hepburn," she later told her biographer, "but I wasn't attractive and nobody fancied me."

The youthful Prunella also hid her middle-class roots, conscious that producers started seeking a new kind of earthy credibility in their actors.

But she started picking up minor parts in theatrical productions, and, while rehearsing for a part at Worthing's Connaught Theatre, she encountered actor Andrew Sachs, who would subsequently appear as Manuel the Spanish server, in Fawlty Towers.

Her initial television exposure occurred in the year 1952, as the character Lydia Bennet in a BBC production of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, which included actor Peter Cushing - more famous for his horror film performances - as Mr Darcy.

And her first big screen roles followed the next year - in romantic comedy, the film Laxdale Hall, and David Lean's Hobson's Choice, alongside Charles Laughton.

Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, she maintained constant employment - appearing on stage, film and television, including a brief stint as a bus conductor, Eileen Hughes, in Coronation Street.

She additionally encountered colleague Timothy West.

After what Prunella described as "a mild Times crossword and Polo mints flirtation", they got together, and married in 1963.

Career Milestones and Defining Characters

Her major television opportunity came with the series Marriage Lines, a comedy program about recentlyweds, the Starling couple.

Scales performed alongside actor Richard Briers, then one of the biggest stars in television comedy. The show proved hugely popular and ran for five years.

Then came Fawlty Towers, which elevated her to cultural icon.

John Cleese and his spouse at the time, Connie Booth, had submitted the first script of their comedy creation to the BBC.

Actress Bridget Turner had been approached to play the Sybil role but she declined the part and Scales auditioned for the role.

She subsequently recalled that Cleese was a hard taskmaster.

"John, quite rightly, was extremely rigorous about learning the script, and if you didn't, he could get quite cross, which was fair enough."

Only 12 episodes were ultimately produced.

The initial season, which debuted in 1975, didn't immediately attract massive viewership but, as it continued, its comedic combination of ridiculous physical comedy and awkward circumstances increased in appeal.

Scales thought hard about portraying Sybil Fawlty, and decided that her social background had to be inferior to Basil's social standing.

At first, John Cleese and his wife were unsure about this approach.

"Once they heard the first reading in rehearsal," Scales remembered, "they were sold on the idea."

Later in her career, she frequently found herself, called upon to play "dragons" and "old bags" when she desired more glamorous roles.

However when questioned about her career pinnacle, Scales immediately identified in picking Sybil Fawlty.

"The role presented challenges," she insisted, "yet I remain proud of my work." She believed it assisted in bringing audience members into performance venues.

"I believe that audience familiarity with one performance encourages attendance at others," she said.

Subsequent Work and Private World

After Fawlty Towers, Scales continued to work in television, including a stint as the frumpy Elizabeth Mapp in the series Mapp and Lucia.

Her vocal talents were frequently featured on audio broadcasts, particularly the BBC Radio 4 sitcom, which later transitioned to TV, and Ladies of Letters, with Patricia Routledge, which evolved into a staple of the program Woman's Hour.

Scales performed two significant royal characters; as Queen Elizabeth II in the television drama of Alan Bennett's work, and as the monarch Queen Victoria in a one-woman show that she presented four hundred times.

She once received a letter from one of Queen Elizabeth's security men who confessed that when Scales came on stage, he stood up.

"The response was automatic," she clarified. "The experience delighted me."

During 1995, she began starring as character Dotty Turnbull in a series of TV adverts for supermarket giant Tesco - which paid her partly in vouchers.

The campaign, which ran for nine years, was identified as the primary reason in establishing its dominant market position in the mid 1990s.

Scales later came in for some gentle criticism for participating in the commercial campaign, when she supported an initiative to stop local shops closing in her area of London.

Among her most accomplished roles came in Breaking the Code, the movie concerning the Bletchley Park wartime codebreakers.

She appears as Alan Turing's mother, who embodies a society that treated homosexual acts as a crime, an attitude that eventually led to his death.

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