My generation swindled young so we must help, says Prue Leith

PRUE LEITH, the new judge on The

Great British Bake has admitted that her generation “swindled” the young and said it is only right they now make up for it.

The 77-year-old cook said parents should be “the bank of mum and dad”, adding that “if you can help your children, you do”. Leith said she told her children, Danny and Li-Da: “Don’t take a student loan – having a loan is desperate. If you need money, come to the bank of mum and dad.”

In an interview with Saga Magazine, she said people of her age were “unbelievably lucky. Not only did we make a lot of cash but we had things like pension holidays, when companies thought they didn’t have to pay in because there was so much money in the pot. Then [the younger] generation comes along and there’s nothing. You’ve been swindled by your parents’ generation. It means that if you can help your children, you do – but there’s an awful lot of people who can’t.”

Unlike Leith, fellow celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay appears to want his children to stand on their own feet after disclosing that his offspring fly economy on family holidays while he and his wife fly first class.

Sting and Nigella Lawson have also spoken about not wanting to spoil their children by leaving them vast inheritances. Lawson said she would “not be leaving a penny” of her multi-millionpound fortune to her two children. Sting, who is thought to be worth £180million, said he did not want to leave his three sons and three daughters with “trust funds that are albatrosses round their necks”.

He wanted them to work and there would not be a huge fortune left because he and wife Trudie Styler spend “what comes in”.

The Social Mobility Commission reports that the number of first-time buyers given financial help to get on the property ladder by parents has risen by 20 per cent in the past seven years.

Discussing other differences in attitudes between her generation and younger families, Leith also advocated a more relaxed approach to parenting.

She said: “I am very in favour of children having a nap after lunch because then they’re not whiney and grizzly by six o’clock. But I don’t think it really matters a toss how you bring children up – as long as they’re loved, they’ll be fine. It’s just hell for the parents.

“Rayne [Prue’s first husband] and I had the children in bed by seven so we could have a drink! Our priority was to have a life, not just be running after children all the time.”

Leith will join hosts Sandi Toksvig and Noel Fielding plus fellow judge Paul Hollywood for the eighth series of

The Great British Bake Off, which begins on Channel 4 in September.

The full interview appears in the May issue of Saga Magazine, available online at saga.co.uk/magazine.