Andrew Sachs' widow: Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand's prank calls tore my family apart

Andrew Sachs and wife Melody arriving for the 2009 British Soap Awards at the BBC Television Centre in London
Ian West/PA
Hatty Collier10 December 2016
The Weekender

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The widow of actor Andrew Sachs has claimed the “filthy minds and cruel jibes” of Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross made him ill and tore her family apart.

Melody Sachs, 83, who lost her husband recently after a dementia battle, said the pair targeted him because they knew he would never retaliate.

Mrs Sachs was referring to the string of obscene voicemail messages left on the Sachs’ private answer machine in 2008 – and broadcast on BBC Radio 2 – in which Mr Brand revealed he had slept with their granddaughter Georgina Baillie, then 22, and a burlesque dancer.

She told the Daily Mail: “He was a sitting target for them with their filthy minds and cruel jibes and they knew that he’d never retaliate.

“They were right. My husband was a gentleman. He would never have stooped to their level.”

After the scandal, Mr Brand, 41, resigned from his radio show and Mr Ross, 56, was suspended from his TV chat show for three months and later left the BBC.

The Controller of Radio 2 also quit and former Prime Minister Gordon Brown criticised the presenters’ “clearly inappropriate and unacceptable behaviour”.

Mrs Sachs said she would have visited the presenters’ houses and told them exactly what she thought of their actions if she had not been in hospital recovering from a hip replacement.

Andrew Sachs - in pictures

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She added: “No one will ever know how deeply we were hurt by it all. It made us all quite ill and the effect was lasting.

“It upset our daughter Kate and caused a rift with our granddaughter Georgina that took years to heal.”

Mr Sachs, from Kilburn in north west London, died at a care home following a four-year battle with dementia which he kept hidden from the public eye.

His wife revealed he had been diagnosed with vascular dementia in 2012, a disease which left him in a wheelchair and unable to speak.

Father-of-three Mr Sachs was best known for playing clumsy Spanish waiter Manuel in 1970s sitcom Fawlty Towers alongside John Cleese and Prunella Scales.

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