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'Oh, I know!' How Sybil became one of TV's funniest characters
The Guardian
|October 29, 2025
Prunella Scales portrayed two of Britain’s greatest monarchs on TV: Queen Victoria and Elizabeth II.
However, she knew that public memory of her would be shaped by another woman - the self-declared domestic and hospitality industry empress Sybil Fawlty, wife of Basil, owner of the worst hotel in Torquay in Fawlty Towers.
Though occupying only a few months of work in a seven-decade career that stretched from Lydia Bennet in a 1952 BBC Pride and Prejudice to a cameo in ITV’s The Royal (2011), the dozen episodes of the 1975 and 1979 series of Fawlty Towers, in which she costarred with John Cleese, who also co-wrote with Connie Booth, have achieved rerun immortality.
They have become a template for perfection in sitcom writing and performances, including Scales’ portrayal of Sybil.
This story is from the October 29, 2025 edition of The Guardian.
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