The Legendary Prunella Scales: Beginning with Fawlty Towers to Great Canal Journeys

Prunella Scales, who died at the age of 93, was considered among Britain's most brilliant comic actors.

Although a long and distinguished career on stage and screen, she will inevitably be remembered as the unforgettable Sybil Fawlty in the classic 1970s television series, Fawlty Towers.

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

It fell to her to placate guests who had been yelled at, totally ignored or, occasionally, physically confronted by Basil when during his particularly frenzied episodes.

Her nightmarish laugh, gravity-defying hairdo and ferocious temper were components of a carefully constructed character that ranks as a humorous triumph.

And while numerous performers would have removed themselves from too close an association with a single role, Scales consistently voiced her delight in participating 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 the theatre - with her mother, Catherine Scales, an ex-actress who'd given it all up for family life.

Bright and bookish, following evacuation during the war to the Lake District, Prunella attended Moira House Girls School in Eastbourne.

During 1949, she earned a scholarship to the prestigious Old Vic drama school and - after two years - obtained a role as a stage management assistant.

This was to the fury of her former headmistress in her hometown, 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 developing character performer instead of a natural Juliet candidate.

"We all wanted to look like Audrey Hepburn," she subsequently informed her chronicler, "however I lacked conventional beauty and attracted no admirers."

The youthful Prunella concealed her middle-class roots, conscious that producers started seeking a new kind of earthy credibility in their actors.

Nevertheless she began acquiring small roles in theatrical productions, and, while rehearsing for a part at Worthing's Connaught Theatre, she met Andrew Sachs, who would subsequently appear as Manuel, the Spanish waiter, in the famous series.

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

Her initial film appearances came a year later - in romantic comedy, the film Laxdale Hall, and David Lean's production Hobson's Choice, alongside the renowned Charles Laughton.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, she maintained constant employment - appearing on stage, film and television, including a brief stint as transport worker, Eileen Hughes, in the popular soap Coronation Street.

She also met fellow actor Timothy West.

Following what she characterized as "a mild Times crossword and Polo mints flirtation", they became a couple, and married in 1963.

Career Milestones and Defining Characters

Her major television opportunity arrived through the series Marriage Lines, a comedy program about a newly married couple, the Starling couple.

Scales appeared opposite Richard Briers, at that time a major celebrity in television comedy. The program achieved great success and continued for five seasons.

Then came the legendary Fawlty Towers, which propelled her to iconic status.

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

Performer Bridget Turner had been considered for the Sybil role but she declined the part and Scales tried out for the character.

She subsequently recalled that Cleese was a hard taskmaster.

"John, appropriately, demanded strict script adherence, and failure to comply would understandably provoke his irritation."

Merely twelve installments were ultimately produced.

The first series, which debuted in 1975, didn't immediately attract massive viewership but, as it continued, its hilarious mix of absurd pratfalls and embarrassing situations grew in popularity.

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

At first, John Cleese and his wife were unsure about this approach.

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

In subsequent years, she frequently found herself, called upon to play "dragons" and "old bags" when she desired 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 insisted, "but I'm still proud of it." She believed it assisted in bringing the paying public into performance venues.

"I like to think that if the public have seen you in one thing they'll come and see you in another," she said.

Subsequent Work and Private World

Following Fawlty Towers, Scales maintained her career in television, including a stint as character Elizabeth Mapp in ITV's Mapp and Lucia.

Her voice was also regularly heard on radio, particularly the comedy program After Henry, which later transitioned to TV, and the series Ladies of Letters, with actress Patricia Routledge, which became an intrinsic part of Woman's Hour.

Scales performed at two major royal roles; as Queen Elizabeth II in the television drama of Alan Bennett's A Question of Attribution, and as Queen Victoria in a one-woman show that she presented four hundred times.

She obtained correspondence from one of Queen Elizabeth's security men who confessed that when Scales came on stage, he stood up.

"It was a knee-jerk reaction," she explained. "I was thrilled."

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

The advertising series, which ran for nine years, was cited as the primary reason in establishing its dominant market position in the mid 1990s.

Scales subsequently faced moderate critique for participating in the Tesco adverts, when she supported an initiative to stop local shops closing in her area of London.

One of her finest performances appeared in Breaking the Code, the movie concerning World War II cryptanalysts.

She portrays Alan Turing's mother, who embodies a society that treated homosexual acts as a crime, a perspective that contributed to his tragic end.

Beyond performance, {Scales was