How Timothy West saw off his love rival Peter Sellers and won Prunella Scales’s heart forever:  The enchanting story of their 61-year marriage by CHRISTOPHER STEPHENS

Their love affair, stretching across higher than six decades, has been known as theatre’s most heartfelt romance since Romeo And Juliet.

Actors Timothy West and Prunella Scales were so completely besotted with every diversified that for many years they wrote to every diversified day after day, whether or not they were working apart or living below the identical roof.

They remained devoted as he became her carer for the length of her long decline into dementia, and won the affection of a brand contemporary skills of fans with their adventures on narrowboats, criss-crossing the arena’s waterways in ten seasons of Gigantic Canal Journeys for Channel 4.

Tim’s demise on Tuesday accepted 90, surrounded by family and chums in a London hospital, marks the give up of their 61-three hundred and sixty five days marriage. But when they met, he used to be trapped in an miserable relationship with his first wife, and Pru used to be about to rep the seek of one of the arena’s biggest movie stars.

The son and grandson of actors, Tim used to be born correct into a dynasty of minor thespians who scraped a living in repertory theatre. He used to be following their example in 1961 when he signed up for a supporting just in a dire BBC play known as She Died Young (‘and none too shortly,’ joked the forged).

Pru played a bishop’s daughter in the Regency skills who’s ravished by a cad. Tim’s excellent line used to be: ‘Can’t assert I blame him, sir. Dammee, she’s a morsel!’

His father Lockwood West, it became out, had already worked with Tear over Scales, in the Beeb’s misplaced 1952 version of Pleasure And Prejudice – he used to be Mr Collins, she used to be flighty Lydia.

Pru used to be astonished to search that Tim used to be Lockwood’s son. ‘I might perhaps have faith sworn he used to be happy!’ she blurted.

The production used to be held up by an electricians’ strike, and to pass the time Tim and Pru started doing crosswords together, sharing packets of Polos and looking out for to faux they weren’t desperately drawn to every diversified.

When he went support to touring theatre productions, she started sending him fan mail, disguising her handwriting and adopting foolish names.

‘Dear Mr West,’ be taught one, ‘I thought you were lovely in Oxford this week, I saw you a number of cases, oh you were appropriate. Of course it is doubtless you’ll per chance presumably have faith correct the form of persona I take care of and you completely set up it properly, don’t you?’ She signed it, ‘H. Inexperienced (Tear over).’

However she also wrote to claim that she used to be being pursued by Peter Sellers, the megastar of a Pinewood movie wherein she used to be appearing, known as Waltz Of The Toreadors. Sellers, who used to be married, badgered her to pass to dinner with him and wanted to be rebuffed half a dozen cases.

Quickly, she and Tim were snatching every opportunity to be together, taking in a single day trains to criss-sinful the country between reveals. ‘I’ll meet any put together you are taking care of to rep on Sat night or Sunday morn, and we are in a position to pass to my flat,’ Pru wrote in one uncover.

However they’d to retain their affair secret. Tim himself used to be married, to a younger lady he’d met when he used to be reading widespread languages at the polytechnic in London’s Regent Road the salvage she used to be an arts pupil.

Her name used to be Jacqueline Boyer, and her family had money – her dull father Jack used to be a former Chelsea FC chairman. As an undergraduate, Tim used to be dazzled by the cocktail parties her widowed mom threw, however he used to be also drawn to Jacqueline’s emotionally unstable nature.

Believing she wished to be rescued, he forged himself in the just of her protector. They were married at 21 and had a daughter named Juliet, however shortly stumbled on out, Tim said, ‘that we didn’t have faith an abominable lot in overall, previous the flexibility to have faith a appropriate time’. Jacqueline’s mood swings became more severe: ‘I by no plan knew what I was coming dwelling to,’ he said.

Pru used to be racked with guilt at being what used to be then known as a ‘homewrecker’, though of course she used to be nothing of the form.

Jacqueline admitted to having an affair, and Tim left her – however the conventions of the time supposed he chivalrously offered to grab the blame for their divorce.

This supposed offering proof of his like adultery. He and Pru, who used to be referred to in court papers as ‘Tear over X’, booked a lodge room in Cheltenham, and organized for a non-public detective to search them there.

Tear over X, however, had an early morning name for a movie shoot, and the snoop didn’t want to drive to Cheltenham in the itsy-bitsy hours. So a compromise used to be reached: the couple would recede ‘twin indentations on the lodge pillows, and an merchandise of female nightwear on the mattress’.

In one of her day after day letters, Pru confessed: ‘Peaceable worried of accepting responsibility for one thing I will’t support regarding, in some manner, as a critical catastrophe, though of course it’ll be a wonderfully Staunch Thing all spherical. I am a COWARD. No, the truth is, it isn’t fully that, it’s the feeling that presumably in this case one might perhaps per chance very properly be behaving in a horribly selfish and inhuman manner, grabbing what one needs for oneself without regard for 2 of us in a weaker location.’

The divorce went through, and on the morning Tim obtained his decree nisi, they were together in Brighton. Sitting in the automobile at traffic lights, Pru requested whether or not they might perhaps now be engaged to every diversified. ‘Sorry,’ Tim answered. ‘Of course – will you marry me?’

He slipped the ring on to her finger however, forward of they might perhaps kiss, the lights modified and they’d to drive on.

This peripatetic lifestyles used to be one he’d known from birth. Officially, he used to be a Yorkshireman, born in 1934 in Bradford, however excellent as a consequence of this came about to be the salvage his oldsters were working that week. As a minute bit one for the length of World Battle II, he grew up in a basement flat in Bristol, forward of resuming a touring lifestyles that saw him succor 13 schools – and getting expelled from not less than one.

His oldsters inspired him to grab a stare upon a more settled career: ‘They thought they owed it to me to provide me a comparatively less complicated lifestyles than they’d had.’ His first job, after shedding by the wayside of college, used to be with a company of furnishings dealers in Holborn in central London forward of coaching as a recording engineer with EMI.

However he used to be already in love with the theatre, and spent his evenings rehearsing in am-dram productions. When he used to be sacked from the music studios for over and over falling asleep, he landed a job as an assistant stage manager at a itsy-bitsy theatre in Wimbledon – ‘making a number of props and enjoying the uncommon butler,’ as he salvage it, for one pound and two shillings a week.

A number of years in internet followed. For the leisure of his lifestyles, Tim might perhaps per chance quote lines from the frightful dialogue in the raze mysteries he performed a week – ‘All good, rattling you Inspector, so I was there in the morning room . . .’ used to be one favourite.

However he also used to be in a location to seem in performs by Chekhov, Ibsen, Shaw, Coward and of course Shakespeare, rising a stage vogue that mixed gravitas with a twinkling mischief. This would support him properly in the course of his lifestyles in tv, though he by no plan loved much success in cinema: he used to be an excessive amount of a persona actor, he believed, to venture a movie-megastar image.

By the time he married Pru in 1963, he had landed a hiss in the Royal Shakespeare Firm, the salvage he stayed for a number of seasons forward of the lure of touring became an excessive amount of. He joined the experimental Prospect company spherical the time that Sam and then Joseph, his sons with Pru, were born. The stress ended in rows that is seemingly to be explosive.

‘There used to be a infamous one early on,’ he confessed, ‘wherein I it looks pulled out some of Pru’s hair, which she then kept in an envelope.’

Pru confirmed the story: ‘I thought the hair used to be one thing I might perhaps per chance reproach him with and assert, “Glimpse what you did closing time we had a row!” ’

The couple must have faith considered the silly facet of these blow-ups, as a consequence of 30 years later when they revealed a series of their love letters, they were laughing about it. Tim admitted, though, that she used to be better at forgetting their arguments than he used to be.

‘I detest rowing however then I nurse the disappointment. I am going spherical gnashing my enamel for hours.’ He poured this vitality correct into a succession of acclaimed roles on TV and stage, alongside with King Lear and Dr Samuel Johnson.

After his award-profitable performance as the pleasure-loving monarch in BBC1’s mini-series Edward The Seventh, he started a walk of exact-lifestyles historical figures: Winston Churchill, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mrs Thatcher’s Cabinet Secretary Sir Robert Armstrong, and Sir Thomas Beecham.

His one failing as an actor, said Pru – his sternest critic – used to be an inclination to be too controlled: ‘When he’s enjoying an emotive fragment take care of King Lear, correct every now and then I want to kick him up the bum to alter into more launch and abandoned.’

He used to be excellent to Dickens, enjoying Mr Bumble in Oliver Twist, Josiah Bounderby in Onerous Cases and Sir Leicester Dedlock in Bleak Apartment. Comedy came correct as without complications, in the long-working sitcom Brass on ITV. And he used to be by no plan too proud to seem in soaps, with roles on every Coronation Road and EastEnders.

This appetite for work, which Pru shared, often kept them apart. At a celebration to have faith a good time their twenty fifth marriage ceremony anniversary in 1988, he told revellers: ‘Whilst you imagine of how much time we exercise working and how much time Pru spends asleep, we’ve the truth is excellent lived together for approximately a three hundred and sixty five days. However she appears to be like a extremely candy lady and I shouldn’t be at all shocked if it worked out very properly.’

One day of their marriage, they retained a scandalous flirtatiousness. In her 60s, Pru told an interviewer that Tim used to be conserving her awake all night and used to be aggrieved to be requested, ‘Why – does he snore?’ ‘I was inflamed,’ she said. ‘My intercourse lifestyles is intensely much there, thanks greatly.’

Within the identical irrepressible vein, she told the Mail that she cherished to retain Tim wondering whether or not she’d ever have faith an affair. ‘I judge it’s highly unlikely Tim has been completely devoted to me all our married lifestyles,’ she declared – greatly tongue-in-cheek and with an seek to teasing.

‘On the opposite hand, I’m ready to provide him the profit of the doubt. I judge he’d be awfully upset if he believed I’d ever been unfaithful. On the diversified hand, I judge he might perhaps per chance very properly be ever so a minute of bored if he thought I hadn’t. So I take care of to retain him guessing.’

One day of her 70s, Pru started to fabricate memory complications, becoming an increasing number of forgetful and perplexed. She used to be identified with dementia and, though he by no plan retired, Tim devoted his lifestyles to caring for her. To stimulate her tips, they returned to an early love, canal boating. Even when she might perhaps per chance not undergo in tips lines, Pru retained her reward for faultless reading, and in 2014 they recorded a time out for Channel 4.

Almost 25 years earlier, they’d been alive to supporters for the renovation of the Kennet & Avon Canal, and had been the principle to navigate its chubby 42-mile measurement after it reopened.

Now they made the time out over again, and viewers seeing them as themselves for the principle time straight fell in love with their unfeigned affection for every diversified.

More than 30 more adventures followed, taking the couple not excellent spherical Britain and Ireland, however to France, Italy, Canada, and even to Argentina and Vietnam.

To look at them taking a gaze out for every diversified, fussing and teasing, fretting and grumbling, used to be poignantly touching.

Their travels resulted in 2019, when Pru became too susceptible to continue. ‘The sad thing is,’ Tim said, ‘you correct learn the slack disappearance of the individual you knew and loved and were very discontinuance to. Whilst you happen to live day-to-day, it is a long way manageable.’

They won praise for their courage in facing dementia publicly and refusing to mask it. Tim remained in demand for TV, appearing in Gentleman Jack, Final Tango In Halifax and, triumphantly, as Deepest Godfrey in a remake of three misplaced episodes of Dad’s Navy.

He leaves three younger of us and seven grandchildren however, above all, it is a long way Pru, now 92, who will be more misplaced than ever without him. She as soon as said: ‘One of the horrors of being so happily married for see you later is that you wonder how on earth either one of that it is doubtless you’ll cope without the diversified.

‘I cannot undergo to judge of the misery of being on my own. It is miles the suitable darkish facet of an otherwise very lucky marriage.’