Prue Leith recounted a moment on Bake Off when she “couldn’t resist”, despite previously turning down an offer to do something similar, but hopes “editors have been kind”
Prue Leith has disclosed that she once “declined” a request from Great British Bake Off bosses due to fears over a specific “danger.” Even though she enjoys dancing, the South African-British restaurateur shared that both her late husband, Rayne Kruger, and her current husband, John Playfair, “flatly” refused to so much as “stand on the spot and jiggle.”
Last month, 86-year-old Prue announced that she would be hanging up her fork and leaving the Channel 4 baking contest in the rearview, acknowledging her age and remarking that she was “getting on a bit.”
Her age doesn’t appear to have quelled her desire to hit the dancefloor, though, as just last year, Prue “couldn’t resist” when she was offered the chance to strut her stuff alongside fellow Bake Off favourite Alison Hammond.
She wrote in her latest book, Being Old…and Learning to Love It!: “Once, during filming an introductory link to a Bake Off series, we were asked to dance in a rough and lumpy field.
“The danger of this old lady tripping and falling was far greater than the brief pleasure I’d get from whirling around with Noel (Fielding) or Paul (Hollywood), and I declined.
“But when, last year, we were filming the New Year’s episode, we had a steel band in the famous tent. Alison Hammond, exuberant as always, was the first up and dancing, and soon I couldn’t resist and joined her.
“While writing this, I’ve not yet seen the resulting film and can only hope the editors have been kind and cut me out if I look the idiot I probably am. But the point is, even if they don’t, I really don’t care.”
Set to be replaced by celebrity cook Nigella Lawson, the face of such shows as Nigella Bites and Nigella Kitchen, Prue was recently asked if she had any advice for the new judge.
Speaking to BBC Radio Oxford about Nigella, Prue had nothing but praise for her, claiming the 66-year-old “knows her onions” and describing her as “wonderful.”
She said: “She doesn’t need any advice from me. She’s so good and she will bring to it’s a whole fresh look and she’ll be wonderful. She’s funny, she knows her onions and she’s delightful.” (sic)
Discussing her exit with The Spectator, cookery writer and novelist Prue confessed that she’d actually been “dithering for years” when it came to selecting a moment to call it quits.
She said: “I have been dithering for years about when to stop judging The Great British Bake Off. When I joined nine years ago, I thought, since I was in my mid-seventies, that I’d be lucky to manage two years.
“At that age, my mother was deaf as a post and away with the fairies, believing her son was her father and that her cat was the one she’d had 40 years before.”
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