The anticipation must be torture for someone as highly “organised and bossy” as Leith, who remarried last year to John Playfair, a retired clothes designer. Prue Leith on The Great British Menu Organised and bossy The duo have been practising on camera after 11 series of the BBC’s Great British Menu, plus one of My Kitchen Rules, for Channel 4, Leith is more than comfortable on camera. “Paul Hollywood and I would get on very well” She has – by her own admission – an ego to match Paul Hollywood, a brightly coloured wardrobe to compensate for Berry’s jackets and is desperate to do it, but has yet to sign a contract. The 77-year-old is headline gold, or would be if she could give me the headline I’m after: confirmation that, yes, she will be the new Mary Berry when Love Productions starts filming the next series of the Great British Bake Off for Channel 4. She flits from berating unimaginative restaurateurs for serving kids dire food and British parents for not wanting to feed their children anything decent, to urging chefs to let kids share their parents’ meals for free and suggesting schools should ban packed lunches “because parents can’t resist putting in chocolate bars”. She could soon be heading up ‘Bake Off’, but until that is confirmed, Prue Leith sounds off to Susie Mesure about ‘rampaging children’, fattening cakes and why she would really like to be known as a novelistįrom her sofa perch in Soho’s House of St Barnabas members club, Prue Leith is laying into “rampaging children” in restaurants and their “exhausted parents”.

Choral Society by Prue Leith