Much loved matriarch of comedy

RUNELLA Scales’ portrayal of Sybil Fawlty was one of the greatest performances in British comedy history.

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Her beehived harridan hotelier of Fawlty Towers, constantly hectoring husband Basil, was as much a result of her brilliance as John Cleese and Connie Booth’s creativity, thanks to her resolve to play a frustrated woman rather than a mere shrieking caricature.

“I don’t think Sybil was a dragon,” Prunella once said. “She was an intelligent and funny woman, rather sexy in all those chic clothes.”

So good was her delivery that it overshadowed her other roles including Miss Mapp in the mid-Eighties series Mapp & Lucia, and as Queen Victoria in her one-woman show performed more than 400 times.