Posted on 08/09/2006 8:11:09 AM PDT by 1066AD
Sybil returns to 'Fawlty Towers' Fawlty Towers star Prunella Scales is to star at the re-opening of the Torquay hotel which inspired the legendary series. Scales, who played the long-suffering Sybil, is set to arrive in a replica of the Austin 1100 famously thrashed with a branch by her screen husband Basil.
The event on 18 September is to mark a refurbishment of the Hotel Gleneagles.
It will be the first time Scales has visited the hotel - which is a local landmark because of Fawlty Towers.
It is the spiritual home of Fawlty Towers Hotel co-owner Brian Shone
Hotel co-owner Brian Shone, said: "We want to make her arrival as memorable as possible and what better way than to have her arrive in the back of a red Austin 1100."
Basil's thrashing of his recalcitrant 1100 in the Gourmet Night episode once topped a poll of memorable motoring moments, beating the Italian Job's car chase.
Show creator John Cleese based the character of Basil Fawlty on Donald Sinclair, a former owner of the Hotel Gleneagles.
Eric Idle's suitcase
Cleese, who stayed at the hotel with the Monty Python team in 1971, described Mr Sinclair as "the most wonderfully rude man I have ever met".
Mr Sinclair, who died in 1981, is said to have thrown Eric Idle's suitcase out of the window "in case it contained a bomb" and complained about Terry Gilliam's table manners.
The actual hotel seen at the start and end of the series was the Woodburn Grange Country Club in Buckinghamshire, but that burned down in 1991.
The Gleneagles has become a popular tourist destination.
Mr Shone, said: "We get about eight or 10 coaches a day stopping outside.
"Some people just want to walk about inside.
"It is the spiritual home of Fawlty Towers."
Mr Shone keeps Fawlty Towers memorabilia inside the foyer of the hotel which, with its new boutique hotel look, is otherwise very different from the hotel in the series.
Fawlty Towers has proved to be one of the most enduring sitcoms in TV history.
Despite only running for 12 episodes, it regularly tops polls of favourite TV shows.
Not much call for it round here.
Que?
Seems like I saw Ms. Scales in something recently. Is she in the Harry Potter films, maybe?
I've never been able to stand prunes!
The HP films aren't in her IMDB bio. Hmmmm . . .
BTW, her birth name is - get this - Prunella Margaret Rumney Illingworth.
It takes a true Briton to hear Margaret, and think Prunella is a better name.
Then it must have been something else. Maybe she was the guest star in a "Miss Marple" show on PBS in the last year or two.
You've got to admit, "Prunella" is distinctive and memorable!
"The veal substitute is off."
Flowery Twats
She was in at least one episode of the "Midsomer Murders" series that I know of.
Ah, I think I caught a couple of those ... must be it!
I hope she didn't drive over any mines, or anything like that.
“Fawlty Towers”! Loved that show, as did my late mother. “Fawlty Towers” still lives here on Public TV and BBC America as does “Keeping Up Appearances” and “Are You Being Served?”.
http://valdefierro.com/
Several classic American TV shows were based on earlier British shows: All In the Family, Three’s Company, The Office, and I think several others.
I also remember watching one of those John Cleese management/customer service training films serveral jobs ago.
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