Gilly Flower Gilly Flower Gilly Flower (26 August 1908 – 17 February 2001) was an English actress and model, best remembered as the elderly Miss Abitha Tibbs in the 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 (September–October 1975 and February–March 1979, apart from the twelfth episode which was not shown until October 1979). 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
Miss Tibbs and Miss Gatsby of the series, though are uncredited in "A Touch of Class" (the pilot). They seldom have main roles in the plot, usually being background characters adding to the atmosphere. Miss Tibbs plays a larger role in the episode "The Kipper and the Corpse", the only time she is seen away from Miss Gatsby, where she is repeatedly startled by a guest's corpse, which Basil, Manuel and Polly are desperately trying to keep hidden from guests until the undertaker arrives. Her unfortunate encounters with the deceased include being knocked unconscious by Polly, being locked in a cupboard with Leeman and fainting