ACTOR Timothy West has told of his heartbreak at watching wife Prunella Scales “disappear” before his eyes as she slowly succumbs to dementia. In a remarkably candid interview, the veteran star — who found a new audience playing EastEnders’ Stan Carter last year — praised her for battling the disease and spoke of his enduring love for the Fawlty Towers icon. Timothy, 81, said: “The sad thing is, you just watch the gradual disappearance of the person you knew and loved and were very close to. “A lot of her has left, but we still enjoy life and there’s still a lot Pru is able to enjoy and we are able to do together.” The Sun reports that Scales, 83 — who played Sybil Fawlty opposite John Cleese’s Basil in classic 1970s sitcom Fawlty Towers — has been increasingly affected by dementia over a number of years. West first realised something was wrong when he watched her performing on stage more than 15 years ago. “It has stunned everyone that it’s developed so slowly. It was a play that Pru was in at Greenwich,” he said. “It wasn’t that Pru had forgotten her lines or didn’t say them properly, it was that I could see her thinking. “I knew there was something wrong — for quite a long time we didn’t know what it was.” Today, despite the condition’s worsening effects, Scales continues to work on projects including radio scripts. The couple recently won praise for their 2014 Channel 4 travelogue Great Canal Journeys, which besides celebrating their love of Britain’s waterways, shone a light on living with dementia. “It’s not Alzheimer’s, it’s a related kind of dementia. It develops very gradually,” West said. “If you live from day to day then it’s manageable, but it’s when you start thinking about the past — What a shame she can’t do that any more, or she can’t appreciate that any more or we can’t talk about that any more — then it’s sad. “We have been so lucky, and we are still so lucky to do things like the canal series — that we can still do things which are contributing to each other,” he said. West is full of praise for how Scales has met her illness head-on, refusing to give in and remaining active. “She is somebody who realises that to keep going is tremendously important,” he said. “She values an awful lot of things about our life — our house and our garden, she’s a very good gardener. And our family — we have such a big family now. I became a great-grandfather the other day.” The couple have been married for 52 years and are parents to Joseph and actor Samuel. Speaking on ITV’s Piers Morgan’s Life Stories, with Scales looking on from the audience, West said: “She’s been absolutely vital to my life. “I think we loved and respected each other on all sorts of different levels — the way we worked, the way we thought, the way we were. “We just felt that it was going to work, and it has. Pru hasn’t got a temper, I don’t think. If she has, then she keeps it very much under control. I do flare up occasionally.” The couple never considered keeping her illness a secret, but West admits that bravely speaking out has cost Scales a number of acting jobs which she is still capable of taking on. “In a way it’s courageous but in another way not to do it would be dishonest, especially if we are going to appear on television together,” he said. “Enough people know about the condition to think, ‘Why aren’t they mentioning it?’ star Prunella Scales,Classic quartet,love interest,canal series,watching wife,studio audience,veteran star,weird obsession,buying women,intelligent person,surprise talent,messy doing,candid interview,Melbourne,Victoria,Australia,United Kingdom,John Cleese,Timothy West,Samuel,Prunella Scales,Connie Booth,Andrew Sachs,Eric Babbage,Piers Morgan

• published: 10 Dec 2015
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