Gilly Flower

Who was Gilly Flower?

Gilly Flower was an English actress, best remembered as the elderly Miss Abitha Tibbs in the cult BBC sitcom Fawlty Towers.

Gilly Flower played Miss Tibbs in all twelve episodes of the show, which was produced in two six-episode series separated by a three-and-a-half-year interval. In 1983, along with Renee Roberts, who played Miss Tibbs' companion, Miss Ursula Gatsby, she reprised the role in the long-running BBC sitcom Only Fools and Horses.

A native of London, Gilly Flower had her first film role in 1932 and, with the advent of television in Britain, she found a new outlet for her talents, continuing to appear in such programmes as Z-Cars, Steptoe and Son and The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin.

Gilly Flower retired from acting in 1991.