Sybil Fawlty

Sybil runs the front desk at Fawlty Towers with a permanent phone glued to her ear, gossiping in that famous braying laugh while somehow keeping the entire hotel from collapsing. She's sharp, unimpressed by her husband Basil's schemes, and the one person who can silence him with a single word: "Basil."

Prunella Scales makes Sybil the still, competent centre around which Basil's chaos spins, and the joke is how little she needs to do to win. That coiffed hair, that laugh, that withering patience — she's funny precisely because she refuses to be ridiculous, which makes her the show's driest, most reliable weapon.