Dame Prue Leith may have finally cracked the secret to ageing well. "I eat well, I sleep well – and I love well," smiles the TV presenter, writer and cook. Her new book, Being Old… and Learning to Love It!, offers a much-needed alternative perspective to the old adage that ageing isn't a lot of fun.
"Love is such an important part of everybody's happiness. I don't think you can be happy without love," says Prue, 86. It can be a passion for "something that really motivates you, whether it's oak trees or breeding dogs, but you have to have something that you really love".
© Dave Benett/Getty ImagesPrue's first husband, Rayne Kruger, died in 2002, when she was 62. He had been the husband of her mother's best friend, and the pair had an 13-year affair before marrying in 1974. But she now says that she's been lucky to find love again.
In 2011, she was introduced to John Playfair during a dinner party at a friend’s house. "What's surprising is that people don't get that falling in love at 70 is no different from falling in love at 17," Prue says. "It's exactly the same anxiety: 'will he ring? Shall I text him?'"
Although they married in 2016, they didn’t move into their dream home together until 2020, after Prue traded her family home of 45 years for a space made for the couple. "If your lover, husband or wife is also your best friend, that does make a huge difference," she says. "John and I share a lot of interests. We could build a house together and not quarrel at all about the decor because we always like the same things."
Prue says they prefer a quiet life in the Cotswolds, where Jeremy Clarkson is a neighbour, but she popped up on Blake Lively’s Instagram in March.
The Hollywood actress described her stay in the area with her husband, Ryan Reynolds, as "the best week ever". The couple became friends with Prue after visiting the set of The Great British Bake Off in 2023, when Ryan was filming his blockbuster Deadpool.
Otherwise, Prue steers clear of the Cotswolds celebrity scene. "We don’t live that life. One of the good things is that the food has improved enormously, but there’s also a pub we go to mostly because it still does ham, egg and chips."
Recipe for happiness
A former fashion designer, John is Prue's biggest cheerleader, celebrating her love of colour and even building a "necklace wall" in their home to house her eye-catching jewellery collection.
"He calls himself my bag carrier and literally comes with me wherever I'm going," she says. "I'm very lucky: he likes fashion, he likes shopping. He buys all my clothes, he made my necklace wall and he buys most of my necklaces, too. I'm his project."
Today, Prue is dressed in her signature rainbow palette: yellow and pink glasses, dangly orange and pink earrings and an orange T-shirt that glows beneath a blazer criss-crossed with blue.
© Getty ImagesOpposite her, John wears a matching orange boutonniere. "He always matches them to whatever I'm wearing. I'm really touched,” she says.
"He's a sexy fellow," she adds with a grin. Not that she's up for talking about sex, despite having devoted a chapter to it in her book; she quotes a study that found that a significant proportion of older people still "indulge in" sex and says that the "particular joy" of taking testosterone is that "it restores enthusiasm for sex".
But "I'm not going into detail about it, and I don't want you to", she grimaces. "You know, young people think that any kind of romantic love stops at 40. But it's not true.
"There is a lot of love in old age – we were at lunch the other day and there were half a dozen couples who had met in their seventies or eighties. Maureen Lipman was totally in love with David [Turner], her new lover. She's just like a teenager – it's very sweet."
"I'm very lucky: he likes fashion, he likes shopping. He buys all my clothes, he made my necklace wall and he buys most of my necklaces, too. I'm his project"
Next chapter
Despite her happy life, Prue is realistic about the amount of time she has left. "I know I'm going to die, and presumably quite soon," she says frankly. "I think about death in the sense of: ‘Is it worth starting another novel? Will I finish it?'"
She is a "very active campaigner" for the legal introduction of assisted dying, having witnessed her brother's painful death from bone cancer. Her son Danny Kruger (Prue is also mother to the film-maker Li-Da Kruger), a MP for Reform UK, is just as outspoken on his views against assisted dying.
"We don't talk very often about it," she says. "But we do occasionally meet publicly – we had a debate about dying sponsored by a hospice in his constituency. We went together to America and Canada [for the 2023 documentary Prue and Danny's Death Road Trip], and interestingly, we both felt that what we saw vindicated our position."
Now, well into her eighties, Prue is entering a new chapter of her life. In January, she announced that she was leaving The Great British Bake Off after nine years as a judge; shortly afterwards, Nigella Lawson was revealed as her successor.
© Instagram"I don't think they could have chosen a better person," she says. "I don't know her well at all, but what I know of her is all good."
She has plans to write more, and to travel more with John. "There are lots of the '-stans' that we haven’t been to – we've been to Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, but I want to go back."
In February, she walked at London Fashion Week for the designers Vin + Omi, wearing an outfit made from plants grown at Sandringham. "I will do it as long as I can because I so enjoy it,” she says. “It suits my show-off nature."
Prue Leith’s Being Old… and Learning to Love It! is out now, published by Short Books, priced £20
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