PRUNELLA SCALES

Family and celebrity friends pay tribute to the star of stage and screen, loved for her unforgettable performance as Sybil in Fawlty Towers

- JACK MALVERN

Prunella Scales was remembered as “a funny, intelligent, interesting, gifted human being” by friends and colleagues who paid tribute to the actress after her death last Monday.

She was 93.

Her sons, Samuel and Joseph West, said that their mother was surrounded by love as she lived her final days at home and that she had been watching Fawlty Towers the day before she died.

John Cleese, her onscreen husband in the sitcom, described her as a talented actress and a kind-hearted woman of whom he was “very, very fond”.

The actor played Basil Fawlty, the exasperated owner of Fawlty Towers hotel, with Prunella as his long-suffering wife, Sybil. He said: “How very sad. Pru was a really wonderful comic actress. I've recently been watching a number of clips of Fawlty Towers while researching a book. Scene after scene she was absolutely perfect.