Great British Bake Off judge Prue Leith revealed she’s “not very steady” on her “pins” any more, and noted that this was a factor in why she called it a day on Bake Off
Prue Leith has revealed the real reason behind her decision to step down from Bake Off as she admitted that one particular scene could have proved “humiliating beyond belief”. A culinary icon who has sat as judge on The Great British Bake Off since 2017, Prue announced last month that she would be stepping away from the programme after nine years.
At 86-years-old, Prue has enjoyed a career not only as a presenter, but also as a restaurateur, novelist, and cookery writer, and has said she wants “more time to do stuff”, noting that she’s “getting on a bit.”
In a fresh admission about her age, Prue has acknowledged that she’s “not very steady” on her “pins” anymore. Indeed, she highlighted a particular scene on the Channel 4 programme that could have been “humiliating beyond belief” and how it might have resulted in disaster.
Speaking to The Shift podcast (March 10), Prue described how this realisation occurred when she and fellow Bake Off stars Paul Hollywood and Noel Fielding were asked to “dance round this field”.
Prue explained that the field in question was “very hummocky”, and, whilst her Bake Off colleagues were able to manage it, she feared going “A over T” or “a*se over t*t.”
She said: “They wanted us to dance round this field. And it was a very hummocky, uneven field, which, of course, Noel could really leap over brilliantly and Paul perfectly good.
“But I suddenly realised, ‘I’m going to go A over T, you know, this is going to be humiliating beyond belief”. So I said, ‘I don’t want to do it’, and they understood – they were fine.
“And that was the first time I had to say, ‘I can’t do that’.”
This wouldn’t be the first instance of Prue alluding to this event in recent times; earlier this month, reports surfaced that Prue once “declined” a request from Bake Off bosses due to concerns about a certain “danger”.
In her latest book, Being Old…and Learning to Love It! , she detailed how she was once asked to “dance in a rough and lumpy field”, suggesting that the aforementioned incident has remained with her.
She penned: “The danger of this old lady tripping and falling was far greater than the brief pleasure I’d get from whirling around with Noel (Fielding) or Paul (Hollywood), and I declined.
“But when, last year, we were filming the New Year’s episode, we had a steel band in the famous tent. Alison Hammond, exuberant as always, was the first up and dancing, and soon I couldn’t resist and joined her.
“While writing this, I’ve not yet seen the resulting film and can only hope the editors have been kind and cut me out if I look the idiot I probably am. But the point is, even if they don’t, I really don’t care.”