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Great British Bake Off judge Prue Leith on global fame, building her dream home and Paul Hollywood’s wedding plans
DamePrue Leith has been in Florida a month by the time w&h catches up with her, enjoying a well-earned breather. Her trip began in New York with a two-day ‘try-out’ of her new one-woman stage show Nothing in Moderation, then, after performances in Los Angeles, Prue and her husband John Playfair drove 4,000 miles to Florida via Texas. The journey took a fortnight.
‘It makes driving to Scotland look like riding to the supermarket,’ laughs The Great British Bake Off judge who is now, she notes, more famous in America than Britain thanks to the show being one of the country’s most streamed series.
‘I can’t walk down a street, even in Florida or Texas, without somebody stopping me and saying, “Are you off the Bake Off show?,”’ says Prue, who turns 83 on 18 February.
She replaced Mary Berry on the Channel 4 programme in 2017, and is joining Bake Off judge and fellow chef Paul Hollywood, 56, on the US version, The Great American Baking Show. ‘Bake Off has been a springboard for me and not many people have this happen to them as octogenarians!’
With 14 cookbooks, including her latest, Bliss on Toast, eight novels and a memoir to her name, plus a cookery school in her native South Africa, Prue will this year return for Bake Off ’s 14th series, after embarking on her first-ever live tour where, she insists, no topic is off the menu.
There’s plenty to digest: her affair with her first husband Rayne Kruger, who died of emphysema in 2002 at the age of 80, when she was 62, her children – Daniel, a former speech-writer for David Cameron, and her adopted daughter Li-Da, who was orphaned at 16 months old by the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia – her deep fondness for Paul Hollywood, and her support for the legalisation of assisted dying. Frank, fascinating and firing on all cylinders, there is truly no stopping Prue Leith.
I absolutely love attention.
I have exactly the right degree of fame. Too much and you’d need a ring of bodyguards, like Madonna. I’d hate that. This is just nice. Every hour or so, somebody stops me, mostly wanting a selfie, although I’ve yet to hear somebody say, and it’ll be a huge moment when they do, ‘I’ve got to have a selfie because I adore the Bake Off’ or ‘I adore you’. They say ‘I’ve got to show my wife that I’ve met you’ or their daughter, husband, father or tiny children are such a fan.
I’ve never done a stage tour and at 82 I’m probably nuts to try!
Nothing in Moderation will be me chattering away about my life, and what will surprise the audience most is discovering I’ve done so much else other than eat cake on telly. It sounds a bit egotistical but [on tour] I will rattle o
