Clips from her decades-long career

As Fawlty Towers star Prunella Scales dies at 93, here's just a small selection of clips from her long career...

Tetley’s advert

An early screen appearance in a 1960 commercial:

Marriage Lines

Prunella’s breakthrough role, starring alongside Richard Briers from 1963 to 1966

Fawlty Towers

The role that made her famous, as the formidable Sybil, wife of John Cleese’s inept hotelier Basil Fawlty, becoming a comedy icon over just 12 half-hour episodes.

After Henry

Written by Simon Brett, Scales played Sarah France, who becomes a widow in her early 30s when her GP husband dies. It ran of BBC Radio 4 for four series before moving to ITV for another series:

Who Dares Wins

She made an appearance alongside Jimmy Mulville and Julia Hills in this Channel 4 sketch series of the early 1980s:

Tesco adverts

As the aptly named Dotty in this long-running Nineties and early Noughties TV campaign:

Great Canal Journeys

Running over ten series, she and her husband Timothy West both talked frankly and touchingly about Scales' dementia as they indulged their passion for narrowboats:

Published: 28 Oct 2025