The chef and broadcaster on paying tax, her ‘banishment bedroom’ and how she once stabbed a colleague (accidentally)
Born in Cape Town in 1940, Dame Prue Leith, 85, moved to London aged 20 and launched a luxury catering company. In 1969, six years before launching Leith’s School of Food and Wine, she opened her Notting Hill restaurant Leith’s, which became Michelin starred before she sold it in 1995. She has also written 12 cookery books and seven novels and since 2017 has been a judge on the Great British Bake Off.
She has two adult children, Danny and Li Da, from her marriage to her late husband Rayne Kruger. She now lives with her second husband John Playfair – who she met when she was 76 – in the Cotswolds. Here she looks back on the moments that changed her perspective on work, love, family, money and health.
I wanted to call my autobiography Greed, because I realised that I always want everything. I’m greedy. I’m definitely a workaholic. If I’ve not done something before, I’ll say yes to it because I’m curious and even if I’ve done it before and didn’t like it, I’ll say yes because I think: “It might be more interesting this time.” I’m very bad at saying no.
The reason I’ve stayed healthy for so long is that I’m very happy. Happiness is a real asset and that’s just luck. My circumstances are great. My children and my grandchildren are all doing well and I’ve managed to find geriatric love. Secondly, I sleep really well, and I can sleep at the drop of a hat. I sleep well, eat well and love well.
I hope the assisted dying bill goes through. I’ve been campaigning for it for 12 years now, ever since my elder brother died such a horrible death. If the law is passed, and I get to the stage when I know that I’m about to have a really horrible time, I will top myself. If the law isn’t passed, I’ll probably do it anyway, because I’ll be dead. They can hardly prosecute me.
I once stabbed someone. By accident. I was cooking in my restaurant, and I was very pregnant at the time and pretty unbalanced, probably physically and mentally. I was standing by the range with a short sharp knife in my hand and I slipped. As I fell, I flung my arm out to try to save myself and stabbed the third chef in his groin. I thought I’d unmanned him. It felt like I’d stuck it into a leg of lamb.
The chaos that followed was so shaming. We needed to get his trousers off to stem the bleeding, but he was Muslim and wouldn’t remove them in front of a woman. I felt suddenly nauseous and rushed into the ladies to threw up, partly because I was pregnant and partly because I’d stuck a knife into someone.
When he’d recovered – after we’d give him lots of attention and love and money as he was off work for a while – he said he’d used the compensation I’d given him to open a café in Barcelona. So, it all ended happily, although I’m sure he’d rather I hadn’t stabbed him.
When my first husband Rayne died, I suddenly realised I had no friends as we’d been almost reclusive. At that point I’d assumed that the sort of people who lived in the Cotswolds were all Hooray Henrys, who talked about nothing but horses and would say: “Do you hunt?” But when I met John, who is totally gregarious, I discovered that the Cotswolds is full of interesting people who are artists and writers and farmers and musicians so I now live a very social life.
When you fall in love with somebody, it doesn’t really matter if you’re 70 or 17. It’s the same thing. You’re worrying about whether he’ll text you or ring you or can you text him. Did I play it cool? No, not at all. I was just so lucky. John had been divorced for 10 years or something. He’s a really attractive fellow and very funny. There are a lot of single, middle-aged women all over the Cotswolds who would dearly love him, and a lot of them say to me: “Why doesn’t he have a brother? Can’t you find me one like that?”
John and I get on pretty well most of the time. The only thing we quarrel about is that I’m very tidy – he would say anally so. I would like a sterile house, but he is the messiest man I’ve ever met but after 13 years of marriage I just say to myself: ‘Is he worth it or not?’ And he obviously is.
We have a banishment bedroom, but it’s only been used once, and that was when I was sick and wanted to be on my own. It’s really John’s dressing room and it’s got a big double four-poster in it, usually strewn with his clothes. I call it the banishment room because if he really snores that badly – or I do – then that’s where we’ll have to go.
Last Christmas I took 17 of our family skiing to Val d’Isère. It did cost a lot of money, but my goodness was it worth it. We had two chalets joined together, a cook so I didn’t have to, and a nanny for the little ones. I was the grand matriarch sitting at the end of the table and we played games and had a family concert including a duet from John and I. And there were no shattered wine glasses.
I’ve never been a good grandmother. It’s a good thing I don’t live in the same town as them because it would really show up what a terrible grandmother I am. I wouldn’t be the one who would step in to help babysit and take the kids to school. I hardly do any of that. The excuse is that I live in the country, and they live in London, but the truth is I don’t think I’d do it anyway, as I’m too busy doing my own stuff.
I’ve read I’m worth £85m, which is total rubbish. I have no idea where that figure came from, and I don’t have a tenth of that. I am perfectly well off, but I’ve earned it and what I feel about money is exactly what I felt about money when I was living in a bedsit and my first salary was £12 a week. I spent £4 renting the room where I started my catering company and lived within my income, which I still do today. I’m not a borrower and never have been.
What I don’t want to do is cheat the taxman. I believe in paying tax. I think everybody should pay it and I’m very boring about it and I won’t employ anybody cash in hand. But on the other hand, I do also want to give my children as much money as I possibly can. I believe it’s better to give it away or spend it than have it sitting in the bank.
Prue Leith’s Cotswold Kitchen is on ITV1 on Saturdays at 11:40am, and ITVX, STV and STV Player