Elizabeth Oldfield speaks to chef, businesswoman and GBBO judge, Dame Prue Leith. 16/11/2022

Elizabeth 

Hello, this is The Sacred podcast, and my name is Elizabeth Oldfield. Every episode, I speak to someone who has some kind of role in shaping our common life: journalists, politicians, artists, filmmakers, faith leaders, and more. I deliberately speak to people from wildly different political and metaphysical positions who disagree on anything and everything. And I hope if you run your eyes on the list of previous guests, you won’t be able to spot a tribe, or a type. And that’s because I’m interested in the deep stuff that drives us, the principles that shape these people who are so formative for the life that we share together. And I’m really interested in the ways we seem to be increasingly divided, increasingly quick to finger point and write each other off, and what we might learn through listening deeply; whether it’s possible to have a bit more empathy and understanding, not least because I think if we’re going to build a livable humane future, we’re going to need all of us. In this last episode of our series, I’ve got a really fun one for you because I spoke to Dame Prue Leith. Prue is a pioneering restaurateur, a word I still honestly, slight divergence, don’t think really exists. It should be restauranteur. But it’s not because it came from French. It is restaurateur; businesswoman and novelist, a cookery writer and a television presenter of course, she’s also the mother of one of our previous guests MP Danny Kruger, who we refer to as little bit. So, if any of that’s confusing, you can go back and listen to Danny’s episode. Prue and I spoke about her childhood in South Africa, her experience of the Alpha course, why it’s really possible to love people we might deeply disagree with, and the social and cultural role of the Great British Bake Off. There are some reflections from me at the end, and next week, I’ll actually be doing a whole series reflection, and announcing some exciting news about our next series. So, I hope you’ll tune into that. In the meantime, here is Prue. 

Prue Leith, it is a busy morning for you in America, and you have very kindly agreed to chat to me. And I’m going to be incredibly mean, which is not do the standard warm up, let’s ease ourselves into this thing. But we’re going to go deep because I’m interested in principles and values and the stuff under all of your amazing achievements and activities and the way I usually frame this is ‘what’s sacred to you?’ Some people really like that word. Some people really hate that word. You could ignore it if you like, but it’s really just trying to get to the principles or values that you’ve tried to live by? We all fail, but you’ve tried that you think have shaped the woman that you are today? 

Dame Prue Leith 

Well, yes, I think they have, and I think that by and large I have managed to live to them. And they’re very boring. I mean, I just think you have to be, and I hope I am, straight with people. And it’s quite difficult sometimes because it’s easier, if you want to be nice, sometimes can’t be straight. But I think in business, and I’ve spent a lot of time in business, almost the most important thing is to remember that everybody in that whole chain of the business matters as much as everybody else. Treating everybody equally is really important to me. And I hope that I’m never dismissive of people who are less important. Of course, it’s impossible not to get a bit starstruck. I mean, obviously, my heart would beat faster if I was dealing with Prince Charles than if I’m dealing with a dustman. But I hope I would be as nice to the dustman as to the King. 

Elizabeth 

That doesn’t sound boring at all. It sounds incredibly fundamental and not that easy to live by, as you said, you have to be pretty dogged about it. I’d love to hear a bit about your childhood, because I have a hunch that it’s not unconnected, and particularly any big ideas that were in the air, religious, philosophical, political or other. What were the kind of the shaping atmosphere like as you were growing up in South Africa? 

Dame Prue Leith 

Well, it was a very long time ago. So, most people’s social mores and manners were a bit tighter than they are today. But I grew up in a household where I mean, dishonesty, any kind of dishonesty was frowned upon. My father thought that telling a lie was a sin. So, I think the sort of honesty and I think, although we didn’t go to church, and we were not a Christian family, and my father, indeed was a definite atheist, my mother was a bit sort of, you know, she would go to church, occasionally. 

Elizabeth  

Interested. 

Dame Prue Leith   

But we certainly, I think, almost everybody in South Africa in the sort of middle–class white community that we lived in, the background would have been a Christian ‘do unto others as you have them…’, you know, the Christian ethic would have been what we went. And I went to a very religious school, I went to a convent school. And so, when I was 11, I was so religious, I was completely boring about it. And I spent a lot of time on my knees praying for my father, who I was convinced would be going to hell fire because he didn’t believe in God. So yeah, I think, yes, I think I was brought up to behave properly, to behave respectfully to everybody, and never to be… because we had a lot of servants because we were, you know, what middle–class South African family under the iniquitous Apartheid regime, that we were always taught to be very polite and friendly to all of our, you know, the gardener and the cook and the housemaid. 

Elizabeth  

How much was the reality of Apartheid talked about at home? How did your parents kind of posture themselves? 

Dame Prue Leith   

Well, funnily enough, I thought, when I went to university, I was quite very proud of my mother, because she was an actress, and she used to campaign against Apartheid. At the time, you could not have the black and white audience together to watch a play. Theoretically, you could have separate audiences coming at separate days to your play. But of course, it just meant that there were never any plays for black people, because there weren’t enough black people who were educated enough to want to come to Chekhov or Shakespeare or when, she was a Shakespearean actress. So, there wasn’t a black audience to make it economic to run a theatre that was just for… or to run a single show that was just for black people. So, anyhow, she was campaigning for mixed audience says, and she was, I remember, she used to come home from standing on the townhall steps and I remember once she came home, and she had a black coat, and it was all streaked with egg yolk because people had been throwing eggs at them. And she belonged to a women’s group, it was called ‘The Black Sash’. Because these women would stand with black sashes on, protesting about Apartheid. When I went to university, of course, I joined a group of students who were protesting about black students not being allowed to come to our university. There was a black university, which was actually quite a good university, but it was it was only for black people. And since education stopped at the age of 10, free education stopped at the age of 10 for black kids; for white kids like me, it went on free ride through university. University was free too. So, it was a deliberate ruse to make sure that there was a massive working class, uneducated and an unempowered workforce, labour force. Anyway, so I went, you know, would walk down Adderley Street in Cape Town protesting about this. And once I got arrested with a bunch of other students, and I felt really quite pleased because I thought street cred would go up because I’d have spent the night in jail. But the police took one look at me and realised I was just a, you know, a camp follower, not a leader. I never got my night in jail, which actually I’m really pleased about because knowing what went on in jail, you didn’t want to go there. So, I came from a liberal family. I thought that we were tremendously, you know, right on and liberal and, and correct. But it wasn’t until I got to Europe that I realised how sort of ingrained prejudice is if you grew up in a country where you never see a Black person socially, so you never shake the hand of a black person, you don’t sit on the same bench as a black person, but when I got to Paris and found myself on the left bank of the university, sitting in a café, say out in the street with a girlfriend or something, and a couple of Nigerians or, Algerians, or Nigerians or black students would slide in and start talking to us. It was, to me, an absolute revelation, because I’d never had any social contact. Although, one of my earliest memories is my Zulu nanny, who was called Emma, who I absolutely adored. And I can remember the feeling of being held as probably my earliest memory of being held by her, and how comforting it was to have my cheek, I suppose if I’d been crying, or something… my cheek would be hot, but her apron, which was white, probably would be cool on my cheek. But if I put my face near the edge of her shoulder, she had a frilly uniform, which had a white grippier lace, scratchy lace on. And I didn’t like that. So, I remember sort of nestling into her neck to get into the cool, white part, smooth part of her apron. So, there was real close contact between little children and their nannies. My mother was an actress, she would work a lot. I spent a lot of time with my nanny, and at that time, it didn’t seem to me odd that I’d go with my brother on the bus and my brother, and I would go to the front of the buses, all kids like to be in the front, but my nanny had to sit at the back of the bus. We didn’t think that was funny. We didn’t think it was odd, because we grew up with it. 

Elizabeth 

I wanted to fill in one gap, which is I know that you are an atheist, because your son told me and when you were 11 you were you said, ‘boringly Christian praying for your father’. What happened? How did you get from A to B? 

Dame Prue Leith   

You know, I don’t know, but my Atheism has got more and more confirmed as I’ve got older. And Daniel (Danny Kruger) has tried very hard. I mean, he made me go and do the Alpha course.  

Elizabeth 

How was it?  

Prue Leith 

I think he was trying to set to save my soul.  

Elizabeth  

What did you think of it, Prue? 

Dame Prue Leith  

I thought it was a lot of rubbish. It was absolutely nonsense. I thought also I found the whole thing… I mean, it was like a big dating agency: lots of young people having a lovely time in a big church eyeing each other, and quite right too. That’s good, I’m all for that. But they also sang the most boring songs. I mean, honestly, the sort of evangelical music canon is just so boring. “Jesus loves you, Jesus…’ on and on and on and on and on, and somebody strumming badly on a guitar. So, the surrounds weren’t great. What I liked about it was that it was very friendly, and the people were absolutely sweet. But honestly, I just found it such nonsense. And there was no, I think all atheists complain of this, because Christians are so confident in their belief, and God willing for them, I mean, I’m not saying they shouldn’t believe, of course they should if they want to, and it does them good. And I have to say that I think Daniel’s conversion to religion or coming to God has improved him, no end. And I have to admit that, thanks Emma. Emma got him into it. And he’s much more open and sort of more in touch with his feelings, more loving and is much nicer. So, God has done him good.  

Elizabeth  

I’m always interested in how we engage across these differences, right? How we stay in relationships, how we stay in conversations with people who believe different things from us, whether that’s politically or religiously. I was reading your novel, ‘The Gardener’, which I have to say, I absolutely loved and has been quite meaningful as I am in the process of getting into gardening, it really gave me a sense of like, joy and creativity. I’m so useless, but I hope to one day, you know, have a little tiny bit of a garden like that. But there’s a poem at the front of that novel, which is about God and gardens. And I had a theory as I was reading, I wondered, I think you published it in 2007/2008, whether… it’s very subtle, but it sounds to me like in that novel, you are having a conversation out loud with Danny maybe that he has recently become a Christian. Or maybe it was when you were on the Alpha course that you’re writing that novel, but it’s shot through there, and the poem goes, “and yet the fool/ Contends that God is not—/ Not God! in gardens! when the eve is cool? / Nay, but I have a sign; /’Tis very sure God walks in mine.” I’m just intrigued, where did that come from? And is my theory complete, nonsense, or is there something in it? 

Dame Prue Leith  

Well, it’s a very famous old poem. And my mother used to quote it, you know, “God wot! / Rose plot / Fringed pool… veriest school of peace” or something. And, of course, a garden is all that, and I’ve often said that… Daniel, and I had a conversation once years ago. And I said, ‘Look, I understand the feeling of you know, when you sit on top of a mountain top and, you’re so amazed at the beauty of this piece or the magnificence of nature, that you want to attribute it to a being, a mind, whatever. But I just can’t be doing that with any of the gods that I’ve ever met, maybe if there was a better one.’ And frankly, you know, I’m sure you’re Christian, so you’ll probably be insulted by this. But I just find the whole idea of a God that needs to be worshipped, wants to be praised morning, night and day is rather despicable. Why would one worship somebody who wants all that?  

Elizabeth 

I’m unoffendable. 

Prue Leith 

Oh good. I also feel that the sort of the way religious people feel that they have to own the whole world that everybody else is wrong, and they are right. It’s just very illogical.  

Elizabeth   

Some people hate the word spirituality. But I’m picturing you in your garden with your hands in the soil. Do you have practices or places that have a special meaning for you or that play a similar role in your life? 

Dame Prue Leith   

No, I don’t.  I mean, I certainly enjoy my hands in the soil, and I like the physicality of gardening. I think I certainly am lost in wonder and admiration and beauty. I just don’t attribute it to a God. But I certainly have those feelings. And I think they call that spirituality, but I didn’t think it is. But I don’t hate the word, I just don’t really understand it. 

Elizabeth   

Yeah, it’s very much a marmite word I find. 

Dame Prue Leith  

And I don’t understand it any more than I understand religion, or God, I don’t understand it. But I don’t think that’s a reason to decry it. I mean, people can’t believe that Daniel and I disagree so much on so many things, but are very good friends, and I love him to bits, and I think he loves me. Why do people have to agree with you, for you to like them? It’s ridiculous. Why do you have to hate other people’s religions? Why don’t you just let them get on with it? I mean, I’m really into tolerance. Oh, well, if we were all just a whole lot more tolerant we’d all be better off. 

Elizabeth  

And does it lead to, whether it’s religion or assisted dying, or one of the other things you guys disagree on? Oh, no, maybe across the family? Are you the kind of family that sits around a table and have a good barney about it? Or you just decide not to talk about the things that you don’t agree on? 

Dame Prue Leith  

I don’t talk to Daniel about… we’ve had a few serious conversations over the years. But no, we don’t talk about it very much. I think mainly because… I think that religious people find atheists sacrilegious, they’re offended by… things that I would say which would be offensive to Daniel, for very good reasons. Because to him, I’m insulting Jesus, or I’m insulting something which to him is really precious. So not wanting to insult him, and yet not being able to, you know, I mean, I can talk to you, I’m rather enjoying talking to you, because I can say these things without you getting offended. But he would be distressed. And I think that’s true for a lot of people. But we have had, I mean, I remember when my first husband died, Daniel’s father, I was really, in a bad way, very distraught. And one day I was lying on a table outside the kitchen in our country house, and I was crying. And Daniel came out and found me there. And he said, ‘Mum, honestly, if you would only let Jesus into your heart, only open your heart, you would not be so unhappy. You would know that you’d see Dad again…’ And I said, ‘Daniel, do you think that if I could believe this stuff, and it could help me I wouldn’t believe it? But I can’t believe it, I just do not believe it.’ And I’m frankly too honest to pretend that I do. So anyhow, a few days I thought about this, you know, opening my heart or stuff. And I was down staying with some friends in Cornwall, with my dog. And it was just a few weeks after maybe a few months, I don’t remember but soon after Rayne had died. And I went for a walk by myself along the Cornish coast by St Just in Roseland. And I went into that little church, which is right on the cliffs and above the sea, and all around the church yard were these wonderful Cornish slates. Big, tall slates with people’s names recorded you know, so everybody who had died in that village since 1400, or something has their name, honestly. And it was fascinating because it had a ploughman, or needle woman, or all sorts of wonderful old trades that no longer exist. And then the latest ones were technologists and, and modern, very modern trades. And I just thought this was amazing. All these people all these years have believed in God. And they feel that having their names recorded somehow, it’s all to do with keeping memories alive. And so anyway, I went into the church, and I’m sitting there with my dog, and I started to cry. And, I was sort of kind of angry. And I found myself…I was talking aloud because I was entirely alone. It was very early in the morning. And I started sort of bracing God and saying, ‘Well, look, here, here I am, I’m in your church, and I’m sitting here, do your stuff, then. If you really want me, this is your moment, come into my heart. I’m sitting.’ Anyhow, no reaction, of course. And then I suddenly realised that I was shouting. And that was quite a relief, I was just having some half crying, half shouting. And, then I suddenly realised the dog was getting quite agitated. So, I turned to look at the dog. And I realised there was a woman standing, she had a bucket and a basket of flowers. And she’d come in to do the flowers. I was like ‘Oh my God, I can’t have a conversation with her and that…’ So, I walked past her and in true English passive fashion, I said, ‘Good morning’, and she said, ‘Lovely day’. We just passed each other. That was my attempt to get God for good.  

Elizabeth  

Oh, that’s such a beautiful, tender, hilarious story of grief and good manners. Thank you for sharing that. So, I wanted to talk about, what I have written in my notes, as your ‘moxie’. Because you have, it’s a kind of just a sense of courage, and confidence, and gung–ho approach to life comes through as soon as you start kind of reading about all the amazing things you’ve done, you know, people tend to know you now for Bake Off most easily, but it’s like this tiny, tiny few lines in the story of your life, which is an incredibly successful businesswoman, restaurateur, a very successful novelist, you’ve just thrown yourself at life. And you told me that when you were putting together… I’d love to hear the story of the motto that was rejected with the initials JFDI. I’m very sad, it was rejected. And I want to know what you ended up with. But could you just tell me a bit about that? That motto, that spirit and where you think it comes from? 

Dame Prue Leith 

I don’t know where my sort of enthusiasm for life or my doggedness, I’m very dogged. If I’m going to do something I get on and do it. I’m not sure where that comes from, I think mostly my mother. Because she was an actress and had a little theatre company, and goodness knows being an actress in a theatre company, and especially in South Africa is a tough job, but she was very good at it. So, I presume some of that; my father was a businessman, and very successful, so I must have collected some of this from them. But I also think it’s quite simple. It’s just that I’ve got a lot of energy, and I have a very optimistic nature, which I think has just to do with the serotonin levels in my brain. I’m just lucky because I’m fairly happy and optimistic. And if you take all that combination, then you want to do stuff, because you’re happy and you’re energetic, and you know, life is good, and, so that’s probably where the gung–ho thing comes from. Where the confidence comes from? I don’t know, I think it’s often very misplaced. Or I will think I can do something, and I absolutely can’t. I remember once when Li–Da was about, you know, that age when little girls do cartwheels all the time? I think it must be six or seven or something. And she was trying to learn to do a cartwheel. And she could do a perfect handstand, but she couldn’t yet do a cartwheel. And I said, ‘Oh, darling, I’ll show you what you have to do.’ And because I could remember doing cartwheels when I was that age, but I’d forgotten. I mean, it just passed me by that I was, you know, probably three stone heavier than then. And I put down one hand to throw myself down, and of course, my arm wasn’t strong enough to help the rest of my body and I just clumped headfirst into the lawn. It was a complete disaster. And it’s kind of the story of my life. You know, I took a job to be a presenter of a television programme in Tyne Tees when I had never ever been on television, and then I was getting to be the presenter. Why did I think I could do it? And actually, I was very bad at it, and I hated it. But I don’t know where.. it’s completely… not always misplaced, because quite often, when you throw yourself into something, you learn quite fast. And I opened my restaurant having never ever worked in a restaurant. But I was fairly confident about that, because I knew what I wanted as a restaurant, I knew that I wanted the kind of restaurant that I’d like to go to, which would be really good food and very nice and comfortable, and quite smart, but the waiters would be nice to you, and they wouldn’t look down on you because you ordered the house wine, and they would be friendly. And you know, because at the time all the restaurants, the smart ones were in hotels, there were white tablecloths, and they were so snobby that anybody like me, you know, a young student wouldn’t have dared to go in, even if you had the money; because they just looked at you if you wore a backpack you couldn’t come in, if you didn’t have a tie on, you couldn’t come in if you didn’t… and if you ordered the house wine, you were not worth serving. So, I wanted to change that. 

Elizabeth  

Prue, are you telling us that you are responsible for the change in restaurant culture? That means now where we are with small plates and informal dining, do you claim credit? 

Dame Prue Leith  

No, but I must have been a little bit to do with some of it. I mean, certainly, I had the first restaurant which had no… we didn’t write the menu in French; we didn’t have any dress rules. You know, we had no dress code, we stayed open late…customers, you know, as long as they were there, we’d feed them. We didn’t say, you know, ‘This place closes at 10 o’clock.’ 

Elizabeth  

It feels to me like you have the opposite of imposter syndrome, which sounds like it should make you arrogant, but that’s not what comes across with you because it feels like you just have quite a high tolerance for failure, that you think it’s always worth a try. Did you not start your catering company without an actual kitchen, living somewhere with no kitchen? 

Dame Prue Leith  

Yes, I don’t know why it is, but I certainly don’t feel imposter syndrome, except in the sense that I often feel I’ll be found out. So, I mean, when I became… certainly when I was put on all those business boards and I became director of a Halifax bank, for example, I suddenly felt like an imposter there. And I was an imposter in a way, because I didn’t really understand half the stuff, but at least I was honest enough to say so. And I remember, I think I probably got this book, I can’t remember… But I remember there was a discussion going on about what we did with large amounts of money overnight. And we had a finance guy who was explaining to us about where all our money was, and he kept talking about derivatives. And I had no idea what a derivative was. And I thought you know, ‘This is absolutely beyond me.’ And I thought, ‘Well, I have to just fess up’, because it’s not right to be sitting here, nodding sagely and pretending I know what we’re talking about. So, I said, ‘Chairman, sorry, can I just stop it for a minute? And I said, ‘I have no idea what a derivative is. Can somebody explain?’ And he said, ‘Oh, Prue don’t worry, I’ll give you a little lesson after this.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll tell you later.’ And as I sat down, the guy next to me, who had been a board member of ICI, he was the personnel director, and then on the board of ICI, he was a big cheese. And as I sat down, he said, ‘I have no clue what a derivative is either’ and I said, ‘It would have been nice if you said so.’ And did think that I can be quite brave. 

Elizabeth  

I honestly, I find it very inspiring. It’s really nice to have someone in public who doesn’t have imposter syndrome, but isn’t arrogant and is just trying to use their gifts and give stuff a go and just ‘effing’ do it. It really, really feels powerful to me. And I wanted to dig in a bit more to your politics, actually, because I think there is the assumption, because you have a Tory MP for a son, and publicly voted Brexit, that you are kind of straightforwardly conservative, but I don’t think that’s right, is it? There’s something more? What are your kind of deep political convictions and how has that shown up?  

Dame Prue Leith  

I think I’ve now voted twice for the Tories, but only recently, and maybe there’s a lot… 

Elizabeth  

You’ve seen a lot of elections, if that’s not offensive, sorry. 

Dame Prue Leith   

I’m not a Tory Party member. I only recently voted Tory, and I think mainly because Labour was such a disaster. And all the people I had voted for in my long life of voting, were in the woolly middle: the Liberal Democrats and the Social Democratic Party and so on. So, I’ve always voted for that squishy middle, but it seems hopeless. There’s no point in voting for the liberals or anybody in the middle now. So, I sort of slightly reluctantly…and then when Corbyn came in, I mean…that’s it.  

Elizabeth   

For someone in the woolly middle, you do have a campaigning streak, right? You have been someone quite vocal about particular issues, particularly access to good food. Could you just say a bit more about that? 

Dame Prue Leith  

It’s part of my bossy streak, I have a bossy streak, and I’m quite opinionated, and I like to interfere. So, if I think things are going wrong, I would like to find a way to fix them. I don’t think I should just complain, I think I should get in there and try and help. And I think that’s one of the reasons that I loved chairing the RSA, because the RSA is an organisation, which is absolutely built on the idea that if there’s a hole in society, and it needs fixing, let’s try and find a way to fix it. And then if that works, then you’ve done that bit, and you set up a charity. If you look at what the RSA has done over the years, it’s you know, all sorts of organisations owe their origins to somebody trying to fix, you know, the Royal Academy wouldn’t be there, the Lifeboat Association, the National Trust, all these things, the RSA had a hand in starting. And so, I’m very activist in that sense and I feel so strongly and passionately that if we don’t get children’s food right, and we don’t teach them to love good healthy food, we haven’t a hope. Because while they would prefer to eat chips and ice cream, we will never get anywhere. And so, I think the answer is to teach them to cook, and then to teach… and then they will gradually get to… if you teach them all about food, not just about cooking, but about food politics, and sustainability, and provenance and all that stuff, they will become interested in food and they eat well. But yeah, I am a campaigner, but only about things I really, really care about.  

Elizabeth   

Yes. 

Dame Prue Leith   

Has Daniel talked to you about assisted dying? 

Elizabeth   

Yes, a little bit. I know that’s close to your heart and you disagree with him very much on. 

Dame Prue Leith 

Yes, I do. 

Elizabeth   

Well, maybe with that, and, you know, publicly voting for Brexit, which I have no interest in talking about particularly, but when you stick your head above the parapet on those things, sadly the reality is now, you do often receive a lot of abuse, and I know that you have been through that. What was that experience like? And what did you take from that kind of really vicious trolling around Brexit in particular? 

Dame Prue Leith  

Why should people mind if I voted Brexit? Why does that make me villainous? Yes, it was horrible, but I mean, I’m now being trolled for all sorts of reasons, not just Brexit. The latest one is that I’m a kitten drowner, if you’ve read my novel, I mean, if you read my autobiography, there’s a passage in it when my mother was drowning some kittens. Anyway, I was 11 years old, and in those days, that was the only way you could control a wild cat population: it was to drown them because there was no such thing as neutering or… 

Elizabeth 

And people are cross with you about that? 

Dame Prue Leith   

Oh, yes, now I’m a kitten drowner: ‘Don’t ever watch Bake Off again! I mean, that woman drowns kittens!’ 

Elizabeth 

What Bake Off does seem to me to do is create a kind of island that somehow, at least tries to and often does sit above that very tribal, often quite toxic, roiling, public conversation in which it seems we’re just finding it harder and harder to tolerate each other, and it’s getting more and more socially acceptable to just be abusive to other people. It occasionally gets attacked for being kind of too woke, obviously, by newspapers who think there’s too many brown people on it. But how much… I know the producers will have the main kind of say on this, but how much do you and the team deliberately try and make it a place of unity and of friendliness, and of people who might be very different politically and socially and economically and religiously can just be friends in a tent? How much is that baked in? 

Dame Prue Leith   

I mean, I would tell you if it was true, but I honestly don’t think any of us make an effort. It’s just effortless because the whole atmosphere is like that. I think we’re probably chosen because we are likely to be kind. And I think that the bakers, the interesting thing about the bakers is the way they choose the bakers, it is all about who can bake the best, it’s all about the baking. And thousands and thousands of people apply. I mean, I forget how many…10,000 people or something apply and then, and all the time they’re being tested and emailed, and asked to send samples and questions and exams, really, to find out how good a baker they are. 

Elizabeth   

Just one sec they sent samples in? Do they have to send like flapjacks in the post? 

Dame Prue Leith  

Yeah, yes, they do.  First of all, they send recipes, then they send pictures, then they send whatever they actually bake, and then they’re gonna have an audition. And it’s a long, long process to get on Bake Off. And by the end, we know that they’re really good. And they’re all really good. And then when they’re down to add in a couple of 100 or something, they then start thinking, ‘Well, we better make sure that they’re not all the same.’ 

Elizabeth 

Not all white. 

Prue Leith 

Yeah, not only ethnically different, but that they’re from different regions of the country, that they’re representative. We just have to then make sure that they’re representative and that means making sure that we have somebody who’s LGBT, somebody who’s… So, we just try to make it as representative as we can without overdoing it. You know, we want it to be truly representative, and so, it’s perfectly alright to have white middle–class women in there, because there are white middle–class bakers. 

Elizabeth 

Yes, they’re not the only ones you bake, but they do bake a lot. 

Dame Prue Leith   

And they do bake a lot. So, I think we’re all chosen because we’re interested in baking, first of all, and I don’t think that they would have a presenter or a host whose stock in trade was being nasty, because it wouldn’t fit with the Bake Off ethos. And the Bake Off ethos just grew because it started as a baking show, and that’s what bakers are. I mean, if you go to a village competition for the best Victoria sponge, they’re not going to undermine each other, those women who are baking the cakes, and the kids who are sending in their cookies. It’s very friendly, loving, and tolerant. So, it suits me, I like it. And it is a safe space. I think the reason it’s so successful is that life is just so tough for so many people, especially at the moment with the cost of living and the horrors of Ukraine and everything else, that it’s just lovely… I don’t want to use the word ‘safe space’ but that’s really what it is: it’s somewhere where you can switch off for an hour, watch cake, what could be nicer than watching cake other than eating cake? And know that nothing nasty is going to happen. I mean, the only stress will be the bakers running out of time or something. It’s not your stress, it’s their stress. 

Elizabeth 

I do think it is, not to overblow it, because it is a show about cake, but that there is something really powerful about one of the most watched shows, not being House of Cards or you know, these things that tell stories about the worst of human nature. But being a place where we’re reminded that we can actually get on with each other really well. And we can find things in common. And we can be kind and funny and thoughtful even if we might believe radically different things. And I just think it’s a great thing it exists. So, thank you for doing it. 

Dame Prue Leith 

Thank you. I wish I could claim all the credit but I’m just you know, one of the one of the cogs in the wheel, but I’m really glad to be there because I think it is an important thing and I think interestingly enough, in lockdown all sorts of government people were really keen to keep it going because they realised that it was not a bit not a sticking plaster, but it was a soothing sell for much of the nation. 

Elizabeth   

Yes, national morale. Prue Leith, you have been very generous with your time, and I’m so grateful for you speaking to us during your busy time in America. Thank you for speaking to me on The Sacred. 

Dame Prue Leith 

Thank you, Elizabeth. Well, I enjoyed it. 

Elizabeth 

Well, the first line that stuck out to me was Prue saying, ‘I hope I would be as nice to the dustman as to the King’, and that seems on one level, a kind of cliche or in nice tea or a kind of throwaway line. But I actually think there’s something quite profound about it, that that commitment, that posture to make eye contact with every human being that crosses our path to treat them with dignity and respect really requires quite a lot of concentration and intention, because pressures on our time, pragmatism at trying to get stuff done, and just the training, frankly, we get about who’s valuable and who’s not means that it’s very easy actually to find ourselves not treating every human being equally, particularly around status, and how powerful or not they are, what they can give us. I really loved Prue making clear that that’s a deep commitment for her. I also really enjoyed her honesty about, yep, she had a kind of liberal family living under Apartheid, but that when she moved away and lived in Paris and was then mixing socially with people of a different skin colour, she felt within herself still that kind of residual prejudice. And just the kind of beauty and the sadness of that memory, that very visceral memory that she described so beautifully about being snuggled up to her nanny who was black and the sense of closeness, that skin–to–skin contact and then the sort of de–humanising weirdness of that nanny having to sit at the back of the bus when she could sit at the front. It just yeah, it reminded me again, as if we needed it of the kind of ridiculous, cruel nonsense of that system and associated kind of legacies that still remain. She was very rude about the Alpha course. She did say people were very kind and very sweet, but it’s clearly not her cup of tea, aesthetically. And then that beautiful, sad story about being in grief and crying out to God in a church and the Britishness of being overheard, in that moment of deep vulnerability and prayer, and just being like, ‘Oh, lovely dog…’ was just an absolute gem. I really think that the clarity, again, it shouldn’t need saying, but sometimes it does, that we can love people that we disagree with, that we don’t have to come to the same positions on things, that we should be able to tolerate the tension of loving people who think that we’re deeply wrong, and loving people that we think are deeply wrong. And letting the big feelings around that and Prue was very honest about, you know, sometimes not talking to Danny, about Christian faith, because he might find it distressing, that it can be distressing them when people we love, feel very differently about things from us. And over the last few years, we’ve maybe had that within families on vaccines, or on Brexit, and how deep we have to dig sometimes not to let that distress become anger, and distance, but just be able to hold it. One of my favourite quotes is from Parker Palmer, who’s a kind of political democratic theorist in the States and he talks about ‘those who can hold tension in a heart opening way will have much to offer for the common good.’ I think a lot about that. What does it mean to be able to hold and tolerate the tension that difference automatically creates? I referenced JFDI and we didn’t get a chance to unpack it properly. But this was from a first email that Prue sent me saying that her motto…that she’d actually tried to make her official motto, I guess when she got her Damehood was ‘Just effing do it!’ but that wasn’t apparently approved. And I just love that about her, the kind of straightforwardness and she’s not at all tortured. And her and Danny had that in common. This bias to action, this really seemingly complete lack of overthinking, which I really envy, and I wonder if it is a generational thing, as well as a temperamental thing and there’s a real strength and beauty in it. And also, it’s not like she just takes credit for it. She doesn’t use it as a kind of moral superiority. She says, ‘Yeah, I’m just lucky. It’s just the levels of serotonin in my brain.’ I ended up feeling so annoyed and protective for her that she gets flack in public about such stupid things. And I actually often feel this about famous people, I feel very protective of them because it’s so easy for us to de–humanise them and for them to become this sort of cypher or symbol in our own imaginary games and to distance ourselves from them. And it’s just another symptom of the ways that we de–humanise and distance ourselves from each other. And I know people sort of get out their tiny violin about famous people, but actually, I do think fame is one of the most distancing and de–humanising forces in the world and that means take care around it. So hopefully, that didn’t happen, I don’t think it did. Anyway, I obviously loved landing it in Bake Off, and, you know, you kind of write it off as a kind of saccharin, cozy sugar–coated distraction from the world. And of course, in some ways it is a very comforting programme to watch. But these cultural narratives are always important, right? The formative things that we watch on repeat or listen to on repeat are telling us something about the world. And what Bake Off is telling us is that it is possible for people from different socioeconomic backgrounds, different sexual orientations, different races, different religious beliefs, to become really good friends, because they’ve spent a bunch of time together. And that’s a really good story to be told. And I’m glad that it’s being told. And that proves part of it because I think she’s nice. That’s it for this series. 

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