Prue Leith on Bake Off and learning to love being old
Dame Prue Leith talks about her secret to staying young and why she’s finally slowing down at 86.
Dame Prue Leith talks about her secret to staying young and why she’s finally slowing down at 86.
It’s heartbreaking news, but Dame Prue Leith has confirmed that she won’t be returning to The Great British Bake Off, the show she’s co-judged with Paul Hollywood for the past nine years. “I’d rather have jumped than been pushed,” she tells us.
“I’d already stopped Celebrity Bake Off; then, last year, I stopped [judging] the American version; and now I’m stopping doing this. It’s less painful if I step down from each one at a time.
“It had to happen sooner or later,” Prue, 86, continues in her cut-glass tones. “I’m more forgetful than I was, I get more aches and pains than I used to, I need a sleep in the afternoon… although the [Bake Off] producers accommodate that very well.”
Prue’s in the living room of her cosy, modern Cotswolds home, where she lives with her second husband, John Playfair, 79, whom she married a decade ago, and her two Cavalier spaniels, Tattie and Teasel.
It’s built just down the road from the house where Prue lived for nearly 50 years with her first husband, writer Rayne Kruger, who died in 2002.
The house is bursting with colour – just like Prue’s famously bright outfits – and packed with books, quirky souvenirs and, for today’s photoshoot, an abundance of British spring flowers.
It’s surrounded by 60 acres (Jeremy Clarkson is one of her neighbours). Despite its sprawling footprint, it features only two bedrooms, though John and Prue each have their own dressing room and bathroom. A log cabin has been converted to a guest house where their combined six children and 12 grandchildren often stay.
When the couple moved in in 2019, they installed a lift “for future-proofing”. “I said, ‘We’ll use it when we’re really old,’ and, of course, since we moved in we’ve walked up the stairs about four times,” Prue says with a chuckle, as she throws a pile of clothes into it and presses the “up” button.
After all, as Prue admits in her wonderfully candid latest book, Being Old… and learning to love it!, she “hates” exercise. Her regime consists of a ten-minute routine, whittled down from the half an hour suggested by a physiotherapist.
“I race through it – it’s so boring. I lie on my bed and roll my knees from side to side, then I bicycle my legs in the air 30 times,” she says, gamely reclining on the sofa to demonstrate. “Then 30 lunges, 30 leg lifts, then I bounce up and down on my toes until my ankles ache – I never do anything any more, once things start aching.”
What about diet? As a renowned foodie (she opened the Michelin-starred Leith’s restaurant in London, launched Leiths School of Food and Wine, and has written 14 cookbooks), Prue’s always been conscious of her waistline – even though, at 12 stone, she looks extremely trim. Until recently, she was wary of fat jabs, “because my life is food"”
But then, last year, John, a retired fashion designer, lost three stone from Mounjaro injections.
(Hero image credit: Chris Floyd)
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