HAPPY BIRTHDAY

PRUE LEITH, 79. The restaurateur, novelist and judge of The Great British Bake Off was once a Leeds Permanent Building Society board member. Its chairman reassured colleagues she wasn’t a feminist, adding ‘indeed, she is very nice, and I am sure you can agree with me that she is very good-looking’. She says of her new fame: ‘I’m quite happy to have people in the supermarket say: “Are you that lady off the telly?” ’ Leith (pictured) married her ‘toyboy’ John Playfair — seven years her junior — at 76. TONI MORRISON, 88. The Nobel and Pulitzer prize-winning American writer is most famous for The Bluest Eye, and Beloved, which was turned into a film starring Oprah Winfrey. Among her fans was Marlon Brando, who regularly phoned her up to read her sections of her novel Song Of Solomon. Morrison says now she is in her 80s, there are three things she has earned the right to say: ‘No’, ‘Shut up’ and ‘Get out’.