Prunella Scales to husband Timothy West: Thanks for sticking with me so long
The pair sat down to discuss their lives together, with Prunella – best known as Sybil in Fawlty Towers – planting a kiss on her husband’s cheek as an expression of love.
Prunella, 91, who has had symptoms of vascular dementia for more than 20 years, told her husband, 89: “Thanks for sticking with me for so long.”
Timothy responded: “Well, we’ve done all right”, before asking her: “It hasn’t really been hard work, has it?”
She replied: “No! He’s a person I like, I love, I enjoy being with.”
Looking back, West said that life with Prunella has not “changed at all” since they tied the knot in 1963.
Miss Scales was diagnosed with vascular dementia in 2014 and West said this was something they “manage” as a couple.
Timothy said: “I know that things are going to change a little bit but it’s been a long time and we’ve managed to do well.”
Asked if there had been any signs that Prunella would need a check-up, Timothy revealed that it was more than a decade before his wife’s diagnosis that he first noticed she might have dementia.
He said: “I came to see a play that Prue was doing in Greenwich, South East London.
“I went to see the first night, it was fine, it was good – much enjoyed by the audience. And then I went to see it again, a bit later on, and I thought, ‘Prue’s a bit strange, she’s not totally with it.’”
He added: “We went to see a specialist who just said, ‘I’m sorry. This is just something that happens to you when you get older, and it’s not going to get any easier but you can cope with it’. We manage.”
Speaking about how they first met, Timothy told how the couple used to write each other – more than once a day.
He said: “We were doing a terrible play. Yes.
“We used to keep talking to each other through letter writing.”
“We both loved writing to each other, sometimes two or three times a day.”
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Prunella – who co-starred with Timothy on 10 series of Channel 4’s Great Canal Journeys – said that she had got to know her husband “better and better and better” over the course of their lives.
In celebration of their diamond anniversary, Timothy recently penned the memoir Pru and Me: A Love Story, charting the ups and downs of their six decades of union, including Prunella’s dementia diagnosis.
Timothy is known for dozens of theatre credits and screen roles, including in Brass, Edward the King, Day of the Jackal and Bleak House.
He most recently starred in the 2019 to 2022 BBC series Gentlemen Jack, playing Jeremy Lister.
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