Prunella Scales: From Fawlty Towers to Great Canal Journeys

Prunella Scales, who died at the age of 93, was considered one of Britain's finest comedic performers.

Although an extensive and respected career on stage and screen, she will inevitably be remembered as Sybil Fawlty in the classic 1970s television series, Fawlty Towers.

Sybil's primary objective throughout her existence to closely monitor her husband Basil described as a "stick insect" - portrayed by John Cleese - between cigarette-fuelled phone conversations with her friend, Audrey.

It fell to her to calm visitors who had been shouted at, totally ignored or, occasionally, throttled by Basil when in one of his more manic moods.

Her nightmarish laugh, extraordinary hairstyle and ferocious temper were components of a carefully constructed character that ranks as a comic masterpiece.

And while many actors would have distanced themselves from too close an association with a single role, Scales consistently voiced her delight in having been part of the Fawlty Towers experience.

Early Life and Career Beginnings

Prunella Margaret Rumney Illingworth was born near Guildford on 22 June 1932.

It was a family deeply in love with theatrical arts - with her mother, Bim Scales, a former actor who'd given it all up for marriage and children.

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

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

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 express this opinion.

During her theatrical training, Scales had been thought of as a junior character actor rather than an obvious Juliet.

"Everyone aspired to resemble Audrey Hepburn," she subsequently informed her chronicler, "but I wasn't attractive and nobody fancied me."

Young Prunella concealed her middle-class roots, conscious that producers started seeking authentic working-class realism in their actors.

Nevertheless she began acquiring minor parts in theatrical productions, and, while rehearsing for a role at Worthing's Connaught Theatre, she met actor Andrew Sachs, who would later star as Manuel, the Spanish waiter, in the famous series.

There was an early television appearance in the year 1952, as the character Lydia Bennet in a television adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, which featured actor Peter Cushing - more famous for his roles in horror movies - as Mr Darcy.

Her initial film appearances followed the next year - in romantic comedy, Laxdale Hall, and David Lean's production Hobson's Choice, opposite the renowned Charles Laughton.

Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, she was rarely out of work - performing across multiple mediums, including a brief stint as a bus conductor, Eileen Hughes, in Coronation Street.

She also met fellow actor Timothy West.

After what Prunella described as "a gentle courtship involving crosswords and candies", they got together, and wed in 1963.

Career Milestones and Defining Characters

Her big TV break arrived through Marriage Lines, a comedy program about a newly married couple, George and Kate Starling.

Scales performed alongside Richard Briers, at that time a major celebrity in TV humor. The program achieved great success and continued for five seasons.

Subsequently arrived Fawlty Towers, which propelled her to iconic status.

John Cleese and his then wife, Connie Booth, had presented the initial screenplay of their comedy creation to the broadcasting corporation.

Actress Bridget Turner had been approached to play the Sybil role but she had turned it down 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."

Merely twelve installments were ever made.

The initial season, which aired in 1975, didn't immediately attract massive viewership but, with subsequent episodes, its hilarious mix of absurd pratfalls and awkward circumstances grew in popularity.

Scales thought hard about portraying Sybil Fawlty, and determined that her character's upbringing had to be inferior to her husband Basil's.

Initially, the creators were unsure about this approach.

"Once they heard the first reading in rehearsal," recalled Scales, "they embraced the concept completely."

Later in her career, she frequently found herself, requested to portray "dragons" and "old bags" when she hankered after elegant characters.

But when asked about what she thought was the high point, Scales had no hesitation in picking Sybil Fawlty.

"The role presented challenges," she maintained, "but I'm still proud of it." She even thought it helped get audience members into performance venues.

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

Subsequent Work and Private World

Following Fawlty Towers, Scales maintained her career in the television industry, comprising an engagement as the frumpy Elizabeth Mapp in the series Mapp and Lucia.

Her voice was also regularly heard on audio broadcasts, particularly the comedy program After Henry, which subsequently transferred to television, and Ladies of Letters, with Patricia Routledge, which evolved into a staple of Woman's Hour.

Scales performed at two major royal roles; as Queen Elizabeth II in the BBC production of Alan Bennett's work, and as Queen Victoria in a one-woman show that she performed 400 times.

She once received a letter from a royal protection officer who confessed that when Scales came on stage, he stood up.

"The response was automatic," she explained. "I was thrilled."

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

The campaign, which ran for nine years, was cited as the biggest factor in establishing its dominant market position in the mid-nineties.

Scales subsequently faced some gentle criticism for taking part in the commercial campaign, when she backed a campaign to prevent neighborhood store closures in her area of London.

Among her most accomplished roles came in the production Breaking the Code, the film about the Bletchley Park wartime codebreakers.

She portrays Alan Turing's mother, who represents a culture that criminalized same-sex relationships, a perspective that contributed to his tragic end.

Beyond performance, {Scales was