1. Sybil Fawlty is a fictional character from the BBC sitcom Fawlty Towers.
13 Facts About Sybil Fawlty
1. 2.
Scales was 43 years old when Fawlty Towers began production.
3.
Sybil Fawlty is Basil Fawlty's wife, and the only regular character in the series who usually refers to him by his first name.
4.
Sybil Fawlty is a far more effective worker and manager than Basil; she handles crises calmly, picks up the pieces after a nasty confrontation and stays polite to guests.
5.
Unlike Basil, who yearns to turn Fawlty Towers into "an establishment of class", catering exclusively to the highborn members of society, Sybil is more realistic and down-to-earth when it comes to clientele, and all that concerns her is the hotel making money rather than the class of guest who stays there.
6.
Sybil Fawlty is the strong figure in the marriage, as Basil is completely incapable of handling even the simplest of tasks.
7.
In "The Germans" Sybil Fawlty is in hospital for less than a whole morning, and in that short period, Basil succeeds in infuriating the guests with an argument over the specific time of a fire drill, setting off a burglar alarm and getting jammed underneath a desk.
8.
Sybil Fawlty slapped him in "The Anniversary", after she believed he had again forgotten their anniversary.
9.
Sybil Fawlty is characterised by a shrill conversational tone and laugh, which Basil compares to "someone machine-gunning a seal".
10.
Sybil Fawlty is the archetypal nagging wife, getting in the way of Basil "enjoying himself" when he squabbles with the guests by forcing him to do chores.
11.
Prunella Scales has said that the reason Sybil Fawlty married Basil was because his origins were of a higher social class than hers; in "Gourmet Night", she recounts an anecdote about "Uncle Ted and his crate of brown ale" while drunk, which implies a working-class background, as do some traces of working-class speech in her accent.
12.
Basil and Sybil Fawlty married on 17 April 1964 and opened their hotel that same year.
13.
The character of Sybil Fawlty was used by special permission of John Cleese.