The world is a sadder place today with the passing of one of Britain’s most beloved actresses and our very favorite gay icon. Prunella Scales started her career back in 1951 and was very quickly cast in very notable movies such as  Pride and Prejudice (1952), Laxdale Hall (1953), Hobson’s Choice (1954) and in the Academy Award-winning Room at the Top (1958).  Her career break came with the early 1960s sitcom Marriage Lines , starring opposite Richard Briers.

It was, however, in 1975 that she won the hearts of the nation (and beyond) as Sybil Fawlty in John Cleese‘s truly wonderful sitcom Fawlty Towers. Sybil was a quick-witted, overpowering dragon, and although her husband  6′ 5″  Basil towered over her physically, she made him cower with her wicked tongue.  One single word that she screamed at him constantly….’Basil…. soon became a national catchphrase.  We loved her also when she dropped all the anger when she was gossiping on the phone to some unknown friend and would screech “Oh, I knoooooow!”,  

There were just 6 episodes in this season …… a British tradition ….. but because John Cleese and Connie Britton his wife who wrote the series together were getting divorced, it look another 2 years for the next, and last, 6 episodes

Scales like her husband Timothy West was a classical trained actor which actually made her comedy performances so rich and wonderfully funny and in her 50 plus years career she successfully moved between genres.Her performance as Queen Elizabeth II in Alan Bennett’s A Question of Attribution (1991), earned her a BAFTA nomination, and there were many other career highlights ….like her  Mapp & Lucia  TV series based on the novels by E. F. Benson. Her remarkable movie resume inc, big blockbusters such as The Hound of the Baskervilles (1978), The Boys From Brazil (1978), The Wicked Lady (1983), The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1987), Consuming Passions (1988), Howards End (1992), Wolf (1994), An Awfully Big Adventure (1995)^[16] and Stiff Upper Lips (1997). etc etc  

But no matter how brilliant she was in films like Howards End, or her one-woman-show An Evening with Queen Victoria that she  performed more than 400 times, in theatres around the world, over the course of 30 years,  she will always be very much  Sybil in our memories and hearts.