Top 55 Prue Leith Quotes

All I need for a perfect holiday is sun and some peace and quiet. Those make for perfect book-writing conditions.

What makes me laugh is ‘Masterchef,’ with that ridiculous thing they always say, ‘cooking doesn’t get any tougher than this!.’

The obesity problem among children is very serious. When advertising budgets are big and business can corrupt the way we live so that it becomes the norm to snack all day – and if you are never hungry you are never going to feel like eating a healthy meal – that can’t be right.

I’m not saying I’m proud of the fact I had a long affair with a married man, but it did help my business. By the time I married and had children I had the business under my belt.

In my 40s: I had two children young enough to think their parents wonderful, my business was booming, I was happily married and living in the Cotswolds with a veg garden and ponies in the paddock. Who could not be happy?

I can’t resist temptation of any kind.

I’m completely addicted to Radio 4, even 100-year-old things like ‘Just a Minute.’ I even arrange my weekends around the Sunday edition of ‘The Archers.’

I’d love to look incredibly glamorous, but I am a wholesome, comforting nanny type: I think I look like an advertisement for wholemeal flour or something.

Before ‘Bake Off,’ frankly, if you’d asked most people on the bus if they’d ever heard of me, it would probably only have been those aged over 55. But if they were 15, they wouldn’t have, and that’s the difference with ‘Bake Off’ – it’s loved across the generations.

I’m quite lazy. I don’t want to learn a new subject like shipbuilding.

I used to always employ South Africans and Aussies and Kiwis – I can’t admit this, well I can now, but I couldn’t admit it at the time – but I didn’t want wet English lads who didn’t want to work in the catering trade anyway.

I get cross with foodies who think hospital food should be Michelin-star and caterers can fall into this trap.

I love writing fiction and can do it anywhere – I once even missed a flight because I was so engrossed.

If I’m going to do something, I’ll do it properly or not at all.

I went to drama school but soon realised I was terrible at acting, so I ditched drama school for art school.

I prefer pub food to posh food.

One summer I was made housekeeper to my own family, making menus and shopping lists. It was my mother’s idea of teaching me to be a grown-up. The main thing I remember is my father being so delighted to get roast duck.

I vividly remember throwing a bowl of porridge at my husband Rayne once when he defended the children instead of me – the patch on the ceiling stayed for years.

I’m a good cook, I am not a great cook. I’m an absolute fraud.

It’s tough to eat well if you don’t know how to cook.

I have never managed to put my feet up, ever.

Bake Off’ has been a renaissance for me. I turn up, taste something and get paid rather well. What could be nicer?

Any woman will tell you after the menopause, nobody whistle at her, well – that’s just the beginning. As you get older people don’t want you at their parties, we all are prejudiced about old people.

After opening my first restaurant in 1969, one of the regular customers suggested I write a cookbook, so I did. Then another. After my 12th one, I started to feel stale.

You can serve good food on a budget provided you don’t waste it.

Aged six, I sailed from South Africa to England by steam ship with my family. It was a three-week journey. I remember crying on my birthday when I didn’t get the enormous teddy bear that was for sale in the ship’s shop but, aside from that, I had a wonderful time.

It’s surprising how you can behave like a 16-year-old in your 60s, or a 17-year-old in your 70s. You know, it’s exactly the same. You fall in love with somebody, you start worrying why the phone is not ringing and thinking, ‘Can I ring him?’

People often ask what my favourite food is, but the answer depends on what I last ate. I love sausages and mash. But if I’d already eaten them for lunch, then you asked me at tea-time, I’d probably answer ‘crab salad.’

The most important thing is to teach children to cook at schools. And not only to cook but to understand about where their food comes from.

I probably eat yogurt more than anything else.

My worst habit is opening the fridge and thinking: ‘I’d like to eat something.’

For me the best food in the world is New British. It’s quite classical cooking with really simple but good-quality ingredients. I also like top-end restaurants and pub grub done well.

I won’t eat something which is high in calories and not particularly wonderful, because that’s just not worth it, you feel guilty after.

If you eat good ingredients, and moderately, it should not be a problem. If you look at the bakers over the years, how many obese bakers have there been? There have been a few – nobody’s saying you can’t join ‘Bake Off’ if you’re obese – but by and large bakers, just like cooks, are not particularly overweight.

Food shouldn’t do you any harm, obviously you don’t want a bad diet, but it should be one of life’s great pleasures.

What I want to do is produce really delicious food. I want it to look nice, because when you see food you should want to eat it. You shouldn’t be saying, ‘Oh my goodness, isn’t the chef clever, he can weave the Eiffel Tower out of carrot sticks.’

Hua Hin is Thailand’s royal beach resort and home to the king’s summer palace. The local food is fantastic, the weather is beautiful, everything’s cheap and the Thai people are so friendly and warm.

I think the BBC likes to have Mary Berry and me around to rebut the charge of ageism.

People say I’m a celebrity chef, and I am on telly a lot but that’s because I judge contests. Perhaps I’m more of a celebrity eater than a cook.

My first taste memory is of our nanny in South Africa making white bread sandwiches with salad cream, which was potato mashed with a cheap mayonnaise thing with bits in it of – I suppose – pickled cucumber. I absolutely loved them.

The most followed chef is Delia Smith. She is my age and doesn’t try to be entertaining, she encourages people to learn the basics.

I get more questions about my necklaces and specs than I do about food.

I’ve baked more cakes since I’ve been on ‘Bake Off’ than I have in my life.

I’d been brought up in a society which didn’t talk about sex, food, money, religion or politics. Those things were all deemed slightly rude.

The way to get to like good food is by learning to cook, which is why I’m for ever banging on about children learning to cook.

I think Paul Hollywood was quite perfectly within his rights to stay with Love Productions. They’d made him famous, he was getting a decent salary and he was enjoying it. Why shouldn’t he stay with them?

I grew up in a very white, privileged, old-fashioned society in South Africa and went to a boarding school run by nuns.

My husband John’s and my breaks are often very culture heavy. He cannot pass a museum without venturing inside, so we tend to see a lot of architecture and so-called places of interest.

Nobody thought a white girl should learn to cook in South Africa. I went to drama school. My mother was an actress, so I thought I’d be an actress.

I am very in favour of children having a nap after lunch because then they’re not whiney and grizzly by six o’clock.

At barbecues, people just like to eat a lot of meat; it’s extraordinary. They eat far more than they normally would at a dinner party.

Nothing beats that sloppy kiss of a six-month-old grandchild.

I just hate television that’s out to make people cry because other people like to see people cry.

I think women write more fully and honestly than men about heart and home.

With great difficulty, I persuaded my dentist to saw one of my teeth level with the others. He thought it might kill the tooth, but it didn’t. I wanted it done because I was doing a lot of television with food and I saw myself eating with these horrible crooked teeth.