The actor son of Prunella Scales and Timothy West has said he has been touched by the “great outpouring of love from people” after his parents died within a year of each other.
All Creatures Great And Small star Samuel West said he is still coming to terms with his father’s death in November 2024, followed by Scales’ death last month.
He told Good Morning Britain (GMB): “The really simple stuff, like when they die you won’t see them again. You think you understand what that means, but then they die and you realise you don’t. So it’s all a work in progress really.”
He added: “We’re meant to bury our parents, aren’t we? We might as well do two in a year, the practice is kind of useful.”
Scales, best known for her role as Sybil in Fawlty Towers, died at the age of 93 on October 27, a day after what would have been her 62nd wedding anniversary.
West said he was helped by “the great outpouring of love from people who didn’t know her but to whom her work and her example meant something”.
He said her acting career meant that she could still be watched on the screen, telling Wednesday’s programme: “She’s available at all times of her life to us now. It’s peculiar, but it’s also wonderful.”
His father starred in TV shows such as comedy drama Brass, sitcom Not Going Out and soaps Coronation Street and EastEnders.
Together, the couple filmed 10 series of the Channel 4 programme Great Canal Journeys, in which they travelled across the UK and other parts of the world exploring different waterways, and talking openly about Scales’ dementia diagnosis.
West, who plays Malvolio in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Twelfth Night at London’s Barbican from next month, said this will have undoubtedly helped viewers who are affected by dementia.
“It dealt with the horrors of dementia honestly at a time when very few things were,” he said.
“That’s a useful thing to do in the bit of your life, I think.”
