John Cleese opens up about how 'second choice' Prunella Scales was exactly right for Fawlty Towers

12 December 2025, 12:43

John Cleese talks Fawlty Towers, losing Prunella Scales, James Bond and meeting The Beatles

John Cleese talks about some remarkable moments in his incredible career.

Not many people can take credit for changing the face of comedy, but John Cleese has a fair shout for having done it at least twice in his career, first as part of the Monty Python crew, and then as the co-writer and star of Fawlty Towers.

Cleese created Fawlty Towers with his then-wife Connie Booth, who played chambermaid Polly opposite Cleese's Basil Fawlty in the two series, 12 episode classic.

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Also starring in (and often stealing) the show was Prunella Scales, who featured as Basil's bossy wife Sybil. Prunella passed away this year at the age of 93.

Speaking to Gold, Cleese said that Prunella was "hugely" important to the success of Fawlty Towers, and also told the story of how she very nearly didn't get the role.

"Do you know she wasn't our first choice? Connie and I had seen a wonderful play in the West End called The Norman Conquests and it had Felicity Kendal and Michael Gambon," Cleese said.

"There was a woman in it called Bridget Turner and Connie and I thought she was brilliant. We sent her the script and she passed. And she told one of her friends she didn't think it was at all funny.

"I went back to John Howard Davies who was our director/producer.... because he'd been an actor he was wonderful at casting and after Bridget said it was not for her, he immediately said 'Pru Scales'."

But even after that recommendation, it wasn't certain that Prunella would get the role that she would eventually become so well known for.

"Pru you see was eight years older than me, so I was very much at the beginning of my career and she was very established. She'd done Marriage Lines with Richard Briers.

"At the first readthrough both Connie and I thought, 'Oh, I'm not sure this is right'. And then at the second readhthrough the next day we said 'Oh no, this is exactly right'. It shows that in artistic things you never, ever know for sure."

Of why he quit Python to do Fawlty Towers in the first place, Cleese said: "I'd left Python because I thought we were repeating ourselves and also because my dear friend Graham [Chapman] had become an alcoholic and it wasn't much fun writing with him.

"I always wanted to write something with Connie because I thought we could do something funny but I never thought it would become anything like as popular as Python.

"In the end it got bigger viewing figures than Python because younger people could understand it and they couldn't understand Python."

In the interview, Cleese also spoke about working with Ringo Starr and Desmond Llewelyn, as well as his desire to play a Bond villain and "frighten the s**t" out of people.