Bake Off’s Prue: I wasn’t a sweet mum to my kids
GREAT British Bake Off judge Prue Leith admits she wasn’t a good mum – and not much better at being a grandma either.
The cookery expert, 80, said she put her career before family life.
She has a son Danny, 45, with her first husband Rayne Kruger – who died in 2002 – and a daughter Li-Da, who the couple adopted a year after his birth.
Prue said she “packed them off to boarding school” aged 12 and believes that the way she brought them up would “not be acceptable today”.
She added: “I’m not a very good grandma but then I don’t think I was a very good mum either. I mean I’m good in the sense that I must’ve done something right because the children are good and they’re happy and we’re a very close family and it all worked, but I did work a lot.
“I think women, especially in the hard days, they have such guilt complexes about the amount that they work. It didn’t occur to me at the time, I didn’t think I’m neglecting them, I just thought, ‘Well, I’ve got to do work and they’ve got to go to school.’”
When Li-Da and Danny – who is now a Tory MP – were little, Prue was enjoying huge success with Leiths School of Food and Wine, which she founded in 1975.
She went on to chair the Restaurateurs Association while making TV appearances and writing recipe books and food columns. Speaking on the Happy
Mum, Happy Baby podcast, Prue said she was so focused on her own needs that she even stopped Li-Da from possibly becoming a professional swimmer. Prue said: “I never turned up at the touchline and watched them play sport.
I’m too selfish. I remember this coach came up to me and said, ‘Is that your little girl?’ and I said yes, and he said, ‘She’s a terrific swimmer and she could really go far.’
“I could just see Saturday mornings going out the window and I thought I don’t want to be in the swimming pool, smelling of chlorine, waiting for some wet child to get out of the pool. I probably denied her the Olympics.
“But when I told her, she said, ‘Mum, I’m glad you didn’t make me go swimming on Saturdays.’”
Prue is judging The Great Celebrity British Bake Off for Stand Up To Cancer on Channel 4 and last night tasted traybakes from James Blunt, Alex Jones, Alison Hammond and Joe Sugg.
● The full interview with Prue is on the latest Happy Mum, Happy Baby podcast episode, out now.