Good Life's Richard Briers reveals struggle with lung disease after years of smoking

The Good Life star Richard Briers has revealed he is struggling with lung disease after being diagnosed five years ago.

The 79-year-old actor, who also starred in Ever Decreasing Circles and Monarch of the Glen, said years of smoking were to blame for his emphysema.

In a joint interview with actress Prunella Scales, he told the Daily Mail: "It's totally my fault. So, I get very breathless, which is a pain in the backside. Trying to get upstairs... oh God, it's ridiculous. Of course, when you're bloody nearly 80 it's depressing, because you've had it anyway."

Briers said he stopped smoking 10 years ago, but by then it was too late. He added: "If you do it in your 30s, you're OK, but after 30 it gets you.

"I was diagnosed five years ago and didn't think it would go quite as badly as it has. It's a bugger, but there it is. I used to love smoking."

Scales, 80, who co-starred with Briers in the 1960s sitcom Marriage Lines - but is best known for playing Basil Fawlty's wife Sybil in Fawlty Towers - said she struggled with her "day-to-day" memory, which she described as "ludicrous".

PA