Baking show host Prue Leith seems like everyone's granny. But did your granny ever drown a litter of kittens?
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00:00Baking show host Prue Leith seems like everyone's granny,
00:04but did your granny ever drown a litter of kittens?
00:07Prue Leith had a privileged upbringing, but its circumstances were tied to unsettling truths.
00:12She was born in 1940 in South Africa, then a sovereign state of Great Britain.
00:17Leith was just a young girl when apartheid — the legal separation of races — became
00:22national law. As a result, the only non-white people Leith ever interacted with growing up
00:27were servants that worked in her home. Still, Leith's family was liberal and opposed South
00:31Africa's political situation. Leith's mother was a founder of the Black Sash,
00:35a women's group that publicly protested against apartheid.
00:39Leith herself was arrested for protesting with some fellow students, but it wasn't until she
00:43went to Paris as a teenager that she realized how little she understood about non-segregated society.
00:49In conversation with Big Issue, she said,
00:51If I could go back to the teenage Prue now, I'd tell her to be more sensitive
00:55about what it was like to be repressed. I'm ashamed to think how, when I was 16,
01:00I skipped down the street giggling away with my girlfriends, and venerable old Black men would
01:04get off the pavement and walk in the gutter so these idiots, who didn't even notice him,
01:08could pass by.
01:10When she was around 11, Leith's mother instructed her to drown a bag of newborn kittens in an
01:15effort to curb feline overpopulation. The traumatic experience was detailed in her 2012 memoir,
01:20Relish, My Life on a Plate, later released in the U.S. under the title I'll Try Anything Once.
01:26Young Leith's pleas against herding the litter went unheeded.
01:29She ultimately carried out her mother's wishes, but wrote that the experience haunted her.
01:33The story caused a ruthless social media backlash,
01:36with some vowing to no longer watch the Great British Bake Off because of what Leith had done.
01:41Leith cleared the air to People magazine, saying,
01:43I can't bear the thought that people on Twitter really think that I would want to drown kittens.
01:48Leith was a student in Paris when she became pregnant at the age of 15.
01:52The man was a French circus performer who pressured Leith into having an illegal abortion,
01:56a dangerous and scary situation in the 1950s. Leith admits she was terrified that the procedure
02:02might go wrong, but that the fear of revealing the pregnancy to her parents was worse.
02:07Leith was instructed to visit the top floor of a local house where she paid a woman to
02:11perform the abortion. Her assumption that the procedure would be painful or even barbaric
02:15proved incorrect. She was given an injection of an unknown substance which ended the pregnancy.
02:21Leith's public persona as a sexually liberated woman has been empowering to her female fanbase.
02:26Yet for 13 years, her love life was a total secret. Not only did Leith spend over a decade
02:31of her life in an extramarital affair, the man she fell for was the husband of her mother's
02:35best friend. His name was Rain Kruger, and Leith had known him since she was a child.
02:40In her memoir, Leith claims to have hero-worshipped Kruger from the age of 7.
02:44When Leith moved to England in the early 1960s, she stayed with Kruger and his wife,
02:49actor Nan Munro, who appeared in such films as Jane Eyre. Leith knew the affair was wrong,
02:53but regarded Kruger, 20 years her senior, as the most influential person in her life.
02:59Once in her 30s, Leith's desire to have children was too strong to ignore.
03:03Over 10 years into the affair, she tried to leave Kruger and move on. But when she did get pregnant,
03:08the couple came clean. Leith and Kruger went on to marry and raise two children.
03:12They were together until Kruger's death in 2002 at the age of 80.
03:16Leith has also admitted she and Kruger dabbled in recreational drug use together.
03:20The substances were his idea. Leith said that Kruger believed drugs should be legalized.
03:24In the 1960s, the couple experimented with LSD, but one experience with the psychedelic had
03:30long-term effects on the would-be dame. Leith recalls the trip starting off euphorically,
03:34until things took a sharp turn into the terrifying. Ghastly hallucinations invaded Leith's mind.
03:40The walls breathed, and the air in the room was visible. She looked down and saw the skin on her
03:44arms dripping off the bones. Leith turned to her beloved, hoping for a reprieve, but remembers his
03:49back appearing monstrously swollen. One horrific acid trip was enough to steer Leith away from the
03:55drug for good. Unfortunately, as much as she wanted to forget about that time she touched LSD,
03:59she's been physically unable to. Some 40 years later, Leith said flashbacks and nightmares of
04:04the incident still plagued her. She woke from unsettling dreams and could still see the air
04:09in the room. Leith initially made a name for herself with her catering company, Leith's Good
04:14Food, which she established at the age of 20. One tragic catering event, however, threatened
04:18to shatter the reputation of the business. During her Nothing in Moderation speaking tour,
04:23Leith shared a scary anecdote about people getting seriously sick at an event Leith's Good Food's
04:28catered. She admitted that 28 people were hospitalized after eating her chicken and
04:32mayonnaise dish, with one guest in critical condition. The culprit was a chicken added
04:37at the last minute to accommodate a larger-than-expected guest list. It was improperly
04:41prepared, and the chicken meat was mixed with the previously prepared food, tainting the entire
04:45batch. Leith added that the venue had no refrigeration, so the dish sat out for the
04:50entire lunch service on a hot day. She said the event still haunts her, and that the man she
04:54nearly killed was an elderly high court judge. She credits the early career blunder as a wake-up call.
05:00In 2012, Leith watched helplessly as her brother David died in immense pain from bone cancer.
05:06Seeing the agony David endured in his final days turned Leith into a staunch supporter of
05:10assisted dying. David was 74 at the time of his death but was refused therapeutic doses of morphine
05:16because doctors feared legal repercussions. Hopeless and desperately ill, David refused
05:21antibiotics to treat pneumonia so he could finally rest. Leith remains an outspoken member
05:26of Dying with Dignity, a campaign that works to overturn the UK's current assisted dying ban.
05:31The Great British Bake Off cast has Leith's back.
05:33Since 2018, the series has hosted the Great Celebrity Bake Off for Stand Up to Cancer,
05:39a five-episode special in which celebrities square off in the quest to be named star baker.
05:44The annual episodes help the Stand Up to Cancer organization raise money for Cancer Research UK.
05:49Like Leith, many of the celebrities who participate have joined the fight against
05:52cancer for personal reasons. What was supposed to be a spell of relaxation on the coastal waters
05:58of Sardinia shifted toward a brush with death when the motorboat Leith was on broke down,
06:03leaving her lost at sea. Unable to get the boat's engine started,
06:07Leith was at the mercy of the sea currents. She spent an entire day drifting on the water,
06:11her fear growing with each passing hour. The boats that passed weren't within shouting distance,
06:16so like Tom Hanks in Castaway, Leith tried to grab their attention by waving her arms.
06:21Mistaking her panic for enthusiasm, the boaters waved back and continued on their way.
06:25Finally, a local fisherman recognized Leith's situation. On the ride back,
06:29he lectured Leith on how her naive behavior could have drifted her out to sea.
06:33Leith, sunburned and thirsty, was simply grateful to see land again.
06:37It's never easy to start a new job, and when Leith replaced Mary Berry on The Great British
06:42Bake Off in 2017, she was entering a cast that had a well-established fan base.
06:47Leith's debut season went off without a hitch, until an innocent mistake unleashed a mob of
06:52angry internet trolls on the already embarrassed dame. As the season finale was set to air,
06:57Leith was instructed to congratulate the winner in a social media post after 10.30.
07:01Leith was in Bhutan at the time, where it was well past 10.30,
07:05so she fired off a congratulatory tweet to Season 8 winner Sophie Faldo. The problem?
07:10Bhutan is several hours ahead of London time, meaning Leith tweeted the finale results early.
07:15The thing that upset me most was I thought,
07:18this will take attention off the winner."
07:21Leith was quickly made aware of her mistake and the tweet was deleted,
07:24but within the 89 seconds it was active, it had been retweeted. Leith confessed on
07:28an appearance of the UK's This Morning that she had made a major blunder.
07:32You have to be a real idiot to do that."
07:35Leith's entrance into The Great British Bake Off family was not a departure from the show's
07:39original format. Leith replaced British cookery legend Mary Berry, who was five years her senior.
07:45Still, Leith has come under fire from internet trolls criticizing her age and fashion sense.
07:49For her part, Leith maintains that there was no real controversy,
07:53as The Great British Bake Off remains focused on one thing — baking. She told The Sacred Podcast,
07:58I don't want to use the word safe space, but that's really what it is. It's somewhere where
08:02you can switch off for an hour, watch cake — what could be nicer than watching cake
08:05other than eating cake? — and know that nothing nasty is going to happen. I mean,
08:09the only stress will be the bakers running out of time or something. It's not your stress,
08:13it's their stress."
08:15Leith's son is British politician Danny Kruger. In recent years, Kruger has taken
08:19conservative stances on pressing social issues. Leith states that while she will always love her
08:23son, she does not share his view on certain matters. Kruger got himself into hot water
08:28when he proclaimed that women should not have complete bodily autonomy when it comes to abortion.
08:33Leith endured a heaping of vitriol from the public because of her son's statement.
08:36She quickly reminded everyone that she does not agree with what he said.
08:39This was further represented when Leith and Kruger faced off about assisted dying,
08:43one of Leith's dear causes. The two even filmed a documentary TV special,
08:47Prue and Danny's Death Road Trip, which aired in 2023. In the special,
08:51the duo tour North America while dissecting and debating the finer points of assisted dying.
08:56It's legal for them to commit suicide. Why can't they get somebody to help them do it?"
09:01The Great British Bake Off is known as a festive show,
09:04one which occasionally involves dressing up in costumes. But in 2020,
09:08one episode contained a surprise, as Leith was unexpectedly on crutches.
09:12She revealed that she snapped her Achilles tendon while filming and was in recovery.
09:16Ultimately, she was on crutches for two episodes. The cast was filming a Wizard
09:20of Oz-themed skit when Leith, who was portraying the cowardly lion,
09:23leapt onto the yellow brick road and felt a debilitating pain in her ankle upon landing.
09:27The injury forced Leith to rely on crutches or a wheelchair,
09:30which gave her a new perspective on the difficulties of being disabled.
09:34She told The Spectator that there are not nearly enough ramps to facilitate people on crutches
09:38and that using a wheelchair in Gatwick Airport resulted in her, quote,
09:42"...being rescued by a stranger, responding to my banging the door with a crutch."
09:46It only seemed like a matter of time before Prue Leith took her show on the road.
09:50Leith's life has been colored with so many character-building experiences,
09:54and her willingness to share them candidly has drawn an audience. But as experienced as Leith
09:59is, she found her foray into live public speaking unbearably anxiety-inducing.
10:03Leith's stage fright nearly overcame the culinary veteran. She spoke of feeling nervous when her
10:08talking tour, Nothing in Moderation, was still in its early stages, and that extreme nervousness
10:12would grip her despite only four people being in the room. Before a live show in New York,
10:17Leith's anxiety caused her to lose her voice. Her onstage jitters needed special attention.
10:22Leith said she took beta blockers on the recommendation of a doctor.
10:25The widely used anti-anxiety treatment allowed her to get more comfortable on tour,
10:29where she was especially excited to interact with her many fans.
10:32They love me in America, mainly, guess why? Because I'm on Bake Off and everybody loves Bake Off.