Fawltless farce from a golden generation

RUNELLA Scales's sad death had a silver lining - BBC1 showed a classic Fawlty Towers repeat on Tuesday evening in her honour.

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TOWERING ACHIEVEMENT: Stars of Fawlty Towers: Sybil (Prunella Scales), Basil (John Cleese), Polly (Connie Booth) and Manuel (Andrew Sachs)

Thanks to John Cleese and Connie Booth's beautifully crafted scripts, every one of the show's 12 episodes was a work of comic genius.

The Builders was the first time Prunella’s Sybil physically attacked husband Basil, kicking him in the shin and walloping him with an umbrella.

She knocked blundering builder O'Reilly to the floor too, telling him, “I've seen better organized creatures than you running around farmyards with their heads cut off.”

Both men had it coming. O'Reilly made Starmer seem competent, and tightwad Fawlty was an explosive cocktail of obsequious snobbery, hypocrisy, and manic insecurity.

A heart attack waiting to happen.

Sybil, whose backstory was fleshed out by Scales, was tougher and more practical, but had her own flaws.

Obsessed with fashion and fingernails, she had a laugh Basil compared to “somebody machine-gunning a seal”, and was forever chatting on the phone to friends - “Oh, I know. I know. I know.”

His pet-names for her include “my little piranha fish”, “my little commandant” and “my little nest of vipers”. Sybil wonderfully described him as “an ageing, brilliantined stick insect”.