EastEnders star Timothy West’s rock solid marriage lasted 61 years – and wife Prunella Scales revealed their secret
Timothy died in his sleep on Tuesday aged 90
A MASTER of the acting craft, Timothy West played everyone from Shakespeare’s King Lear to Stan on EastEnders.
Yet perhaps his most cherished moments on screen were as himself — pootling in a boat on Channel 4 series Great Canal Journeys with Prunella Scales, his beloved wife of 61 years.
Intelligent and witty Timothy, who died in his sleep on Tuesday aged 90, displayed a devotion to his wife that brought a lump to the throat.
Intended as a travelogue, Great Canal Journeys instead became a reflection on the couple’s decades-long love story — undimmed after Fawlty Towers star Prunella’s dementia diagnosis in 2013.
After a canal ride to Langollen, Denbighs, where they had spent their honeymoon 50 years before, she said: “We just fit, somehow. He never bores me. When he talks, it’s interesting or entertaining.”
Modest and gently spoken, he said: “She can’t remember things very well. But you don’t have to remember things on the canal. You can just enjoy things as they happen — so it’s perfect for her.”
‘Incredible talents’
He is survived by Prunella, 92, their two sons — actor-director Samuel and teacher Joseph — and his daughter Juliet from an earlier marriage to actress Jacqueline Boyer.
His children said in a statement yesterday: “After a long and extraordinary life, our darling father Timothy died peacefully in his sleep yesterday evening. Tim was with friends and family at the end.”
Timothy Lancaster West CBE was born in Bradford in 1934 and his actor parents Olive and Lockwood advised him to avoid the theatre at all costs.
But after stints selling office furniture, and as a recording engineer, at age 22 he became an assistant stage manager at the Wimbledon Theatre.
He would soon start acting — for much of the 1950s in provincial theatres before joining the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1962. He later went on to play Macbeth twice and King Lear four times.
He was also a French intelligence agent in 1973 film The Day Of The Jackal and took the title role in BBC TV biopic Churchill And The Generals in 1979.
His versatility saw him play Russian despot Joseph Stalin on stage, and greedy mill owner Bradley Hardacre in Eighties comedy Brass on ITV then Channel 4 — a satire of dour BBC working-class dramas of the previous decade.
He also played Stan Carter on EastEnders, and Coronation Street’s Eric Babbage, love interest of Gloria Price.
With acting in his blood, he continued until the end. Hours after his death was announced, he was seen in BBC soap Doctors, as the neighbour of a patient who fell in their garden.
The BBC show tweeted that it was “a moving reminder of his in- credible talent.”
He met Prunella in 1961. Cast together in BBC play She Died Young, they bonded by doing crosswords and eating Polo mints.
Prunella, later famous as Sybil in Seventies sitcom classic Fawlty Towers, said: “We had a mild, Times-crossword flirtation, and he said, ‘Would you like to come to the pictures?’ I said, ‘Yeah, love to’.”
They kept in touch by post before a fateful date in Oxford. Timothy said: “We went punting, had a meal somewhere and the rest is history.”
The sad thing is you watch the gradual disappearance of the person you knew and loved
Timothy West
But in 2013, Prunella was diagnosed with vascular dementia, and Timothy cared for her in their home of 50 years in Wandsworth, South West London. The next year, they began their canal series.
Two years later, he said: “The sad thing is you watch the gradual disappearance of the person you knew and loved.
“Perhaps we have been to a concert, play or film and there is not much we can say because Pru will have a fairly hazy memory.
“I should think it is very frustrating for Pru. She is very kind and does not let on. It is frustrating for me, of course. We need each other.”
But they cherished her moments of lucidity, while viewers delighted in their affection and gentle ribbing.
With Pru’s speech and mobility failing, in 2019 they signed off with a tear-jerking trip to Oxford.
He said this year: “I would give anything to have the old Pru back. But the fact she doesn’t have to worry about anything very much is a crumb of comfort.”
Actress Dame Joanna Lumley said yesterday: “Timothy and Pru did an amazing job convincing people dementia was not something you should be always afraid of — rather something you could embrace and live with, and live with well.”
