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- [01:00]
Intelligence Squared Producer
Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti. Today's episode is part one of our recent live event with Bake Off. Judge Michelin, starred restaurateur and author Prue Leith. Leith joined us at the Royal Geographical Society in London to discuss how to live fully and age well. Drawing on her new memoir, Being Old and Learning to Love it, she shares insights on aging, love, resilience and the importance of facing life's final chapter with honesty and grace. From strutting the catwalk and finding love again in her 70s to facing life's hardest goodbyes with humor and grace, Leith reflects on a life shaped by success, loss and reinvention. Let's join our host, Mariella Frostrop live at the Royal Geographical Society.
- [01:49]
Mariella Frostrup
Good evening, everybody. Thank you so much for coming. I'm incredibly excited to be here to have a conversation with Dame Pruleath, who over the last 60 years has scaled the dizzy pinnacle of the British food scene and then moved on. I'm afraid to say it and she'll probably kill me. To the enviable status of national treasure. Not least down to her presence as perhaps the nation's favorite and most well known judge on the TV program the Great British Bake Off, a position that she recently vacated. I use the word retirement with great trepidation. In her company in order to pursue new and varied challenges. In her long career, she's seen Huge success as a Michelin restaurateur, founder of the renowned Leith School of food and wine, TV, cook, food journalist, author. Having birthed, I think, 25 books to date, this is number 25, nine of them novels, and along the way created a cluster of other businesses and indeed sat on a number of hugely high profile, huge corporate boards, many of those positions at a time when she was the only woman at the table back in the day. So her energy and her ability to do a myriad of things is absolutely unquestioned. Talk about a portrait in the attic. I was thinking that seeing as you've now given up the Great British Bake off, perhaps you could bottle whatever it is that keeps you going, that fuel whatever it is and give us all a little vial of it as we le. What is it?
- [03:35]
Prue Leith
I don't know. People often ask me that and I think it's a really banal thing to say, but I think I eat really well, I sleep really well and I have a very happy life. And if you've got happiness and you sleep well and you eat well, why wouldn't you have energy and enthusiasm? But I have no idea. I'm just lucky.
- [03:58]
Mariella Frostrup
We're going to talk about how to have a happy life in a bit, but I was struck by the title because obviously it's Being Old and Learning to Love It. And having read the book, what's very clear is that you do love it. It's not that you're learning to. And I wondered at what point you'd kind of whether you'd had a sort of Damascene revelation that the only way to get old. Well, and happily, no.
- [04:21]
Prue Leith
I wish I could claim that, but it's more banal than that. I wanted to call this book Being Old, and the publishers, who always have an eye to sales, said that's a really negative title. And I said, no, it's not. Being old is great. And they said, well, we have to have something upbeat in the title. We just can't have being old because it won't sell. So they said, why not being old and learning to love it. So I said, fine, but I didn't really have to learn to love it because I've always had a very. I've been lucky and I've had a wonderful life and it just has gone on into old age.
- [05:00]
Mariella Frostrup
But having a wonderful life and loving being old are two not necessarily, you know, sympathetic things.
- [05:08]
Prue Leith
No, But I had started to think about. You don't get to 86 without thinking about death and all sorts of, you Think about all sorts of things that you don't think about when you're younger. About money and what you. You know, writing a will and all that sort of stuff. So I had started to think about being old and realizing that there were lots of things I couldn't do anymore. You know, like, you know, I love gardening, and that's great. I can get down there, but I can never get up again. And, you know, I don't. I used to ride a lot, and I don't ride anymore because I can't afford to fall off. You know, when you're young, you can fall off just fine. So I had started to think about old age, and I started writing this because almost like. It's really just a lot of essays on the various aspects of old age. And they include things like health and. What else?
- [06:16]
Mariella Frostrup
I don't know, the lessons on everything. Fashion, love, sex, career, everything.
- [06:27]
Prue Leith
It's just chapters on all these things. And I'm a journalist, as well as all those other things, so I really like writing short pieces about concentrated subjects. And so I just started writing these blocks of things, and I kept finding that they were quite funny and that it led me into anecdotes and stories about. Not all about my old age, but quite a lot about old age. And I had a mother who was senile. And honestly, she gave us a few real belly laughs. I mean, I know senility, we all fear it, so. But for the person who's lost their marbles, it's absolutely fine. They don't know they're away with the fairies. They think it's perfectly logical what they're saying or doing. It's the people around them who suffer. So I was just talking about aspects of old age, and then I thought, you know what? This is a book.
- [07:28]
Mariella Frostrup
Well, before we go on to the sort of celebration of it, you mentioned that your mom had dementia. Is there anything that you fear about it? Because at the end of this book, I'm thinking, just roll it on. I'd like to be an octogenarian.
- [07:43]
Prue Leith
No. I mean, of course, lots of bad things happen when you're old, but lots of bad things happen when you're young. I mean, especially when you're young, because you're so much more sensitive when you're young and sort of tender, so you hurt more easily. One of the great joys of old age is you actually don't give a toss, do you? You know, you think, I don't care. If you don't agree, fine, that's fine. You know, you're much easier. Life is easier in many, many ways. And there are all sorts of really brilliant things about old age. One of them is a siesta in the afternoon. I tell you what, it's become my. I now have it written into practice, not into my contract, but if I'm making a film or television series or something, there's a, you know, call sheet and it tells us all where we're meant to be all the time. And then, you know, at 2 o' clock it says, pruse a nap. And then there's an hour where everybody gets an hour off in the middle of the day and the crew love it because they can do their emails and ring their girlfriends and stuff.
- [08:57]
Mariella Frostrup
Very grateful for your.
- [08:58]
Prue Leith
So, yeah, and I never would have had the courage or, or the need, I suppose, when I was young to say, can we have Prue's nap in the middle of the day?
- [09:09]
Mariella Frostrup
Yes, you mentioned contract, so I thought perhaps you could address the elephant in the room for all the Bake off fans that might be here, which is, you know, why. Why did you decide? I mean, clearly reading the book, to be honest, it seems to make up such a large part of your life as well, and has done for the last.
- [09:25]
Prue Leith
Yes, it has.
- [09:26]
Mariella Frostrup
20 years.
- [09:27]
Prue Leith
Well, I've done Bake off for nine years. Nine years. And I really loved it and I could happily have gone on doing it because I like the people I was working with. They've all become very good friends. The company is a joy to work with. I mean, it's what you see when you see Bake Off. It looks friendly and kind and lovely and that's exactly what it is. And in nine years, I never heard anybody shout at anybody. Nobody ever walked off in a paddy. So there was no reason to leave, except that I was running out of time and I wanted to do more of other television, not just cake. And I wanted to have more time, particularly in the summer, to go on holiday in Europe, because, yes, I'd had wonderful holidays in the Southern hemisphere in the winter. And I'm not against that. I love that. I come from South Africa and I'm not going to stop that. But I thought, well, I think I need two holidays a year and one of them should be. I realized I'd never again, if I went on with Bake Off, I would never have a holiday in the south of France again. I'd never go to Italy, I'd never have any time in Greece or Spain. And that's terrible. So this year I'm taking the whole Family. And we're going to take a house and in St. Jean Dulos, you know, on the Atlantic coast, so the teenagers can surf. And it's France. I love France.
- [11:05]
Mariella Frostrup
Yeah. Yes. I mean, listen, it sounds sensible, but there's few people who would walk away from a job like that, certainly in youth, I suppose. And also, I mean, the thing that's remarkable with you and plays into your narrative of luck, but it's not really luck, as I think will establish, is the fact that, you know, you had this brilliant opportunity to not reinvent yourself, but to expand what you were doing in your 60s. And it's something that not a lot of women get the opportunity to do.
- [11:41]
Prue Leith
I know. Well, that's the point about luck. I mean, not a lot of people. First of all, Bake off is the dream television job. I think almost everybody on television would envy it. I mean, when you think about it, especially as a judge, all you have to do is walk on, eat cake, say what you think, walk off and get paid and get well paid. And you know what? There's no rehearsal, there's no lines to learn, there's no script to write. It's just. It's such an easy job.
- [12:22]
Mariella Frostrup
You can only say that now that you're leaving, can't you? Not very good in the contract negotiation.
- [12:27]
Prue Leith
No, no. You know, they've always been hugely generous and lovely and, you know, and I'm thrilled for Nigella because, you know, she really deserves it. She's a terrific. You know, she's everything she needs to be. And she'll be very different. I think it's. You know, and she's clever, you know, Nigella's much brighter than me.
- [12:52]
Mariella Frostrup
Oh, stop it.
- [12:53]
Prue Leith
She is. When I was chair of the Royal Society of Arts, I asked her to do the. We decided to have an annual food lecture. Lecture about anything but about food. Nigella was very young then, in her 20s, and she came and gave the first food lecture, and it was on food and culture and how people hang on to food memories and recipes. And wherever they go, immigrants will take their. Immigrants will take their food with them. And so you get these wonderful pockets of diasporas and they're defined by their food. And she talked about the Sephardic Jews and traced their. All over the world where they're.
- [13:41]
Mariella Frostrup
She just mesmerized their food.
- [13:43]
Prue Leith
She Very, very good.
- [13:44]
Mariella Frostrup
I think that she was once described as looking like people imagined Helen of Troy would look. So I think it's probably true. She's got the most incredible, incredible face, but also a Very good cook and a very, very keen baker.
- [13:58]
Prue Leith
Yeah, very keen baker. Very keen. She learns lots more about baking than I do. I mean, I'm not much of a baker. My husband complains fairly frequently that we have a cake free house and he wished he'd married Mary Berry. And it's true. I mean, I can make a perfectly good cake, but it's not my thing. I mean, I'm much more of a cook than a baker. And I think they hired me because I'm a set of good taste buds, because I'd had a. I'd had a chef school for 20 years or something. So I had tasted an awful lot of food and I'd had a restaurant. So, you know, I do know about food, but I'm not a baker.
- [14:46]
Mariella Frostrup
Another thing that I would argue you've had very good fortune in. And I don't normally say this, or wouldn't normally say this, but is in husbands, because your first husband, at a period of time when you were incredibly busy starting your business, building your business, coming to London all the time, was a sort of slightly reclusive, preferred his own company, your company and the family, but that was about it and kind of gave you enormous, or left you with enormous freedom to pursue all the things.
- [15:18]
Prue Leith
And he was also. He was really helpful because he was the chairman of my company and he was quite financially literate, which was more than I was. So he taught me a lot about business and he did all that and he was at home all the time. So, you know, when the children were little, before they went to boarding school, he was there when they came home and he did a lot of the school run and so on, and he loved to stay in the country and he never wanted. He wanted a few old friends to come and visit us. But it wasn't all brilliant because I. I loved that life because I was very busy in London. I would go up on Monday or Tuesday and I would work all week in London and I would be at one of my businesses and I'd be in the restaurant in the evening. And I lived a very social, busy life. And so when I got home on a Friday, I was absolutely knackered. And I was quite happy to eat scrambled eggs and stay at home with the kids. Would come home and it would be just the family. And I loved that. But when he died, I suddenly realized that I had no friends. I didn't know any of our neighbors. We'd lived there for 20 years. It would be hard, you know, we could wave to them in the Street. But we didn't know any of them. We'd never been to dinner with them. They'd never come to dinner with us. So then I realized you actually need friends. So there's a chapter about friendship.
- [16:48]
Mariella Frostrup
Yes, because you say that one of the very few things, in fact, I think it's the only regret in the book is that you didn't cultivate more girlfriends. And I wonder if it's also a generational thing. I don't know if you were a very busy, professional woman then that perhaps those were the things that you had to sacrifice because you had to be very good at family and home and do the work.
- [17:12]
Prue Leith
I don't know. Or maybe I'm insensitive a bit and. But I was very lucky. You talked about in my husband's. Because how many people have one happy marriage? I've had two happy marriages.
- [17:24]
Mariella Frostrup
Well, I know, because at 70, along comes, actually a neighbor. Probably lucky you didn't meet your neighbors when you were still married to that one, isn't it?
- [17:33]
Prue Leith
Oh, I don't know. I think that's an interesting point because I think that if you really love somebody, if you're married to somebody that you truly love, you don't see other men in that way. You don't sit at the dinner table looking at some, you know, godlike figure and thinking, lusting after them. You don't lust after other people when you're in love with somebody. And so I don't think it would have. But it would have been a big mistake because then John and I would probably have just become mates and never. It never occurred to us to become real mates. But I was 70 when I met John. And I remember I was giving a talk in his local church for some book thing that I was flogging. And I had just met him and I really fancied him. And it was eight years since my husband had died. And I thought, you know, I really like that guy. And I knew he was going to come to this talk and I thought, well, I better bite the bullet and tell him I'm 70, because if he's going to leave, I'd rather he.
- [18:52]
Mariella Frostrup
If he's not going to be interested, go now.
- [18:56]
Prue Leith
I didn't want to get too deeply, so I worked into my talk that I was 70 and he was still there at the end of. I thought I'd get up and walk. She's probably regretting it now because he's been here for 15 years.
- [19:18]
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- [21:50]
Mariella Frostrup
But the thing that I was really fascinated by as well in the book is your description of, you know, maybe this is just because of everything we're fed about aging and so on. But, you know, you describe it as being quite a lustful, you know, attraction. And I think there's a description where you take him to a play that your son is in some way.
- [22:15]
Prue Leith
Because what happened was. What happened was I met him a couple of days before I was going off to Canada on a book tour or something. And so while I was in Canada, and this is exactly what happens when you're 70 or you're 17. It is the same thing. You find yourself behaving like a teenager. I was looking at my phone all the time thinking, is he ever going to text me, this guy? Or can I dare text him? You know, what can I say? And I'd write a text and then I delete it and so on. This went on for two weeks while I was in Canada, and finally, just before I was coming back, I had a text from him saying, would you like to come out to dinner? And I thought, good. But I couldn't because I had agreed to go to London to see a play that my son was running a charity in prisons where they did drama with prisoners, and the prisoners, they were giving this play. But I texted John back and I said, I can't, because I've got to go to a play in London that my son's producing. But you can come if you like. Would you. I'll get you a ticket. So he came and he sat next to me and we were on. It was in a sort of village hall, you know, some. Not a proper theater. And we were all in just chairs stuck close together. And I sat next to John and I started thinking, is that leg of his. Is it just that they haven't got very big chairs and I'm taking up too much room? But is this deliberate pressure? Is he actually. Is he giving me a bit of a knee? You know, unfortunately, he was.
- [24:05]
Mariella Frostrup
But it was so fabulous to read because, you know, you sort of imagine that, you know, I mean, you must have this. You imagine that you're going to change, you know, as you get older, that you're going to become this different, more mature, wiser person. And I'm constantly shocked at how little that's true. You know, I look in the mirror and I go, what? You know, because inside I still feel probably. I don't know, probably. I probably got stuck about 37, 38, I think, was my ideal. And the idea that you're going to fall in love in that way, in the kind of. Has he texted yet? And, you know, Is that his thigh pressing against me?
- [24:42]
Prue Leith
Just the same.
- [24:43]
Mariella Frostrup
It. It's so refreshing, actually, to have it described.
- [24:49]
Prue Leith
And I think lots of older single people do long for love. They really do. But I don't know what you do about it because, you know, a lot of people ask me, or ask John, how did you meet? How did you meet? And somebody. I was on Loose Women, you know, that television program, and there's a panel of women, and John was in the audience, and in fact, he's embarrassed me twice in Loose Women. But this time somebody said, how did you two meet? And he said, quick as a flash. Geriatric Tinder. And, you know, quite a lot of women have contacted me saying, how do I. I can't find geriatric. How do I get on?
- [25:44]
Mariella Frostrup
Didn't it end up on the COVID
- [25:45]
Prue Leith
of a newspaper who.
- [25:47]
Mariella Frostrup
Lise admits she met her.
- [25:49]
Prue Leith
Yes, exactly. Some newspaper columnist pretended to believe it and said I'd met on geriatric Tinder.
- [25:55]
Mariella Frostrup
Would you like to explain the second
- [25:57]
Prue Leith
time that he embarrassed you? Well, the other time was American Viagra. Oh, yeah. They were asking if you had. There was a. The panel were discussing a new drug that was only available in America, and it was a kind of biography for women. It would help you with your libido, you see. And so they asked me, would you take such a drug? And I'm quite canny now because I know what the Daily, the Mail online or the Mirror will turn any story into.
- [26:30]
Mariella Frostrup
Some salacious geriatric Tinder story.
- [26:33]
Prue Leith
Exactly. So I said. So I said rather carefully, well, you know, if it was legal and it was safe and it wasn't too expensive and it was available in this country, and my doctor rec. And they thought, this is a very boring answer. So they went across to John, sitting in the front row of the audience, and said, how would you feel if Prue took this drug? And he said, oh, God, don't give her any more. And then he said. And then he said, I'd have to call in reinforcements,
- [27:12]
Mariella Frostrup
but we will move on from John in a moment. But I feel he's a rich vein here that we can dig into a little further. Because the other thing I said about you being lucky with husbands is that in many ways, he's the polar opposite of your first husband. I mean, he knew everybody in the Cotswold.
- [27:32]
Prue Leith
Yes, he did. That's why I have lots of friends now, because John knows absolutely everybody and has lived in the Cotswold for 20 years or something. So he not only knows the best plumber and the best electrician and the best carpenter. He knows what their wives are called, how many children they've got. I mean, he's really friends with everybody. And he's also friends with all the toffs. So he knows all sorts of poshos.
- [28:00]
Mariella Frostrup
All theirs?
- [28:01]
Prue Leith
Yes, all the poshos. And so it's great, you know, and he also.
- [28:08]
Mariella Frostrup
Which is the most extraordinary thing about him, I think, because I've not heard this before at all. He buys all your clothes. He chooses and buys all your clothes. You could say that was controlling. No, it's not.
- [28:21]
Prue Leith
No, no, it's wonderful because I hate shopping. I absolutely hate shopping. But I do like clothes, and he knows I like color. And he has made me much more colorful since. I've got much worse, you might say, or better, certainly more colorful in the last 15 years when he's been around. But he buys everything, and it's brilliant. He just holds up lots of shirts. Do you like that one? Do you like that one? Do you like that? I mean, in fairness, often I say, no, no, I'll never wear that. And he says, just try it on. And then I try it on, and I like it. So he's really good. But he's also. Because he has genuinely retired from his business, which was the fashion business. He was a manufacturer and designer of women's clothes, posh women's clothes. So he knows what he's looking for. But then, because he's completely retired from that, he has made himself. He calls himself, when we go anywhere, he introduces himself as. I'm her bag carrier, he says. And he does literally carry my bag. And when you're my age and you carry a laptop around you, it's quite heavy. And so my bag is a handbag carrier. I need one, and I've got one. And he sticks with me. He's here today to prompt me when I forget what the hell I've forgotten about American Viagra.
- [29:48]
Mariella Frostrup
Do you think it's also important as you age, particularly working as you have on television, to sort of develop a Persona of sorts? Do you think that, in a way it makes the whole experience more comfortable?
- [30:04]
Prue Leith
I don't know. I don't know. You're certainly right that the whole. That television, especially Bake off, did jump me to a level of profile or whatever you call it?
- [30:18]
Mariella Frostrup
Stardom, darling. Stardom.
- [30:21]
Prue Leith
Whatever.
- [30:22]
Mariella Frostrup
Come on, embrace it.
- [30:27]
Prue Leith
That I certainly never had before. But, you know, I'm such an exhibitionist and such a. I mean, I just love the attention when people, you know, if you take me And Paul Hollywood, as a kind of comparison. Paul never wants to go to anywhere where there will be lots of strangers because he knows that they want selfies and he hates that. And he doesn't like, you know, and he's very good about it. He will never refuse and he's totally polite, but he just doesn't enjoy the attention, whereas I absolutely love it. And he's quite genuinely modest, sticks to his little group of friends. He doesn't want to. I mean, I'm invited every year, we're both invited every year, I won't be next year, but to go to New York to publicize the American Bake off, which we also do. And it's called Great American Baking show, but it's exactly like the British one, except the American contestants. And Paul doesn't want to go because, you know, he'll have to meet lots of strangers and have his photograph taken and not to turn down going to New York, you know, I love New York.
- [31:42]
Mariella Frostrup
And have you always loved attention? I mean, was that when you were little, when you were.
- [31:46]
Prue Leith
Yes, I think so. I think I've always been a show off, really.
- [31:50]
Mariella Frostrup
So how did you end up doing something that required so much hard work then? Like setting up a Michelin starred wrestling and setting up the food school and so on? Because those aren't necessarily going to attract attention, they're just going to take a lot of grafts.
- [32:05]
Prue Leith
No, but the thing is, what happened was I ended up in Paris at university and I was doing a course on French civilization, which I loved. But the fact is I had to live in Paris for two years. And you can't live in France for two years and not notice that everybody's interested in food and that the food is really. So I became really fascinated by food and I thought, actually what I want to be is a cook because I want to make this food. And that led to, first of all, I had a catering company and if you're a caterer or a cook, basically you want a restaurant because what you want to do is cook for people and you want to feed people and you want to see them eating your food. So I started to want a restaurant and my first husband was hugely helpful there because he was a writer, but he also had a property company and he owned a couple of houses in Notting Hill. And so I started my restaurant in the ground floor of these houses, which he was fixing up as flats. And of course, just about that time, Tina Turner bought a flat just opposite my restaurant. And that was the sort of beginning of the Notting Hill revival because suddenly people wanted to live in Notting Hill. I like to think it was because there was a good restaurant there, but
- [33:38]
Mariella Frostrup
it was finally they could eat Tina
- [33:40]
Prue Leith
Turner, leave there and. And that was more luck than anything.
- [33:46]
Intelligence Squared Producer
Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by Margarita Valparto and it was edited by Mark Roberts. For ad free episodes and full length recordings, you can become a member@intelligencesquared.com membership and if you'd like to join us at future events, you can see our full program and buy tickets over@intelligencesquared.com attend. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us.
- [34:28]
Carvana Customer
I sold my car in Carvana last night.
- [34:30]
Prue Leith
Well, that's cool.
- [34:31]
Carvana Customer
No, you don't understand. It went perfectly. Real offer down to the penny. They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong.
- [34:37]
Prue Leith
So what's the problem?
- [34:39]
Carvana Customer
That is the problem. Nothing in my life goes to smoothing. I'm waiting for the catch.
- [34:42]
Mariella Frostrup
Maybe there's no catch.
- [34:43]
Carvana Customer
That's exactly what a catch would want me to think.
- [34:46]
Prue Leith
Wow.
- [34:47]
Mariella Frostrup
You need to relax.
- [34:47]
Carvana Customer
I need to knock on wood. Do we have wood? Is this table wood?
- [34:50]
Prue Leith
I think it's laminate.
- [34:51]
Carvana Customer
Okay. Yeah, that's good. That's close enough.
- [34:52]
Commercial Announcer
Car selling without a catch. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up fees may apply.