Sybil is a far more effective worker and manager than Basil; she handles crises calmly, picks up the pieces after a nasty confrontation and stays polite to guests.

In "The Germans" Sybil is in hospital for less than a whole morning, and in that short period, Basil succeeds in infuriating the guests with an argument over the specific time of a fire drill, setting off a burglar alarm and getting jammed underneath a desk.

", except for one moment in "The Psychiatrist", when Basil is driven to his breaking point and angrily lashes out at her, calling her a "rancorous, coiffured old sow" to her face.

A few times, Basil has infuriated Sybil to the point of violence; in "The Builders", she flies into a rage and throws a cash box across the room toward her husband, who only just manages to avoid it, after which she kicks him on the shin and strikes him with an umbrella.

Basil also refers to her by a number of epithets, occasionally to her face, including; "the dragon", "that golfing puff adder", "toxic midget", "my little nest of vipers", "sabre-toothed tart", "my little piranha fish", "my little workhorse" and "my little Kommandant."

Prunella Scales has said that the reason Sybil married Basil was because his origins were of a higher social class than hers; in "Gourmet Night", she recounts an anecdote about "Uncle Ted and his crate of brown ale" while drunk, which implies a working-class background, as do some traces of working-class speech in her accent.

In November 2007, Scales returned to the role of Sybil Fawlty in a series of sketches for the BBC's annual Children in Need charity telethon.