INTERVIEW
As actors Timothy West and Prunella Scales mark their 60th wedding anniversary, he reveals the challenges he faces following her dementia diagnosis ten years ago
As the taxi driver drops me off at the iron gates of a Victorian house in Wandsworth, south London, he does a double take. ‘Are you visiting Sybil?’ he asks, referring to the iconic Fawlty Towers character Prunella Scales played alongside John Cleese in the 70s sitcom.
Clearly the 91-year-old actor is as muchloved today as she was when the comedy first aired on BBC Two nearly 50 years ago. She is one of the most recognised faces on television, along with her husband Timothy West, who turns 89 this month. Two national treasures with one of the longest lasting marriages in the history of British entertainment.
On 26 October they will be raising a glass for their diamond wedding anniversary at the fivebedroom home they have shared since the 70s. And on their coffee table will be a copy of Tim’s latest book, Pru and Me, which covers their love story from the time they first set eyes on each other in the 60s – acting together in what Tim describes as ‘the most awful BBC drama’ – until Pru’s 90th birthday last June. ‘I was rather surprised to be doing another book at our age,’ says Tim, sipping a glass of red wine, while his wife is having her hair done for our photoshoot.
Somehow their house is exactly how you would imagine the home of two admired thespians with colourful lives to be. We are in the living room on a big, squishy sofa. To the side is a large, polished table, where numerous dinner parties have been held. It’s packed with art, books and memories. It leads on to a conservatory looking out onto the mature enclosed garden famed for its summer parties. Hannah, their fluffy cream cat, wanders around, unperturbed by us all.
‘We didn’t think our lives would still be of a great interest to people although even in recent years we have done such a lot together,’ says Tim, who appeared in the BBC hit Gentleman Jack and whose love affair with canals led to the Channel 4 show Great Canal Journeys.
As if travelling around some of the most extraordinary and remote waterways in the world for the series wasn’t challenging enough for a couple in their eighties, they were doing it while coming to terms with Pru’s recent diagnosis of vascular dementia, a non-curable type of dementia caused by reduced blood flow to the brain, which causes a decline in thinking skills and short-term memory. Her diagnosis was in 2013 and during the ten series, which aired from 2014-2019, Pru’s memory worsened. ‘I was honest with the viewers about
