After three years of marriage, why I’m finally going to move in with my husband, by Prue
many partners start to secretly yearn for some space of their own in later years – whether they admit it or not.
But not Prue Leith, who has revealed she will finally move in with her husband after their years of marital bliss living in cottages a mile apart.
The Bake Off judge, 79, married John Playfair in 2016. But the pair decided it would be easier to live separately in the Cotswolds because they had too much stuff to fit under one roof.
Explaining the arrangement, she said: ‘my husband has a house in the next village, but he stays here every night and only goes home to do his laundry.
‘But we didn’t move in together here because, at our age, you both have a house full of stuff and the thought of having to throw half of it away is awful.’
The TV cook told Hello! magazine that she and mr Playfair will live together officially ‘one day’ when they build their ‘eventide home’ to grow old in.
The couple have their eye on a nearby farmhouse, she said, and she hopes her chil dren will take over her beloved cottage.
During the interview, she said: ‘John and I will move there [the farmhouse]. Then the children can have this [house], if they want it. and if they don’t, we will sell it. We have to do it while we are energetic enough.’
The move will also make a change for the couple’s pet, a cavalier King Charles spaniel called Tattie.
miss Leith has custody of the spaniel, which she gave to her husband as a wedding present after he told her he had owned a cavalier called Woofer 40 years ago.
miss Leith married retired designer mr Playfair five years after meeting him at a dinner party. She was previously married for 28 years to writer Rayne Kruger, until his death in 2002.
In an earlier interview, she claimed the secret to her second marriage was their unusual living arrangement, which meant she did not have to put up with his ‘junk’.
‘He lives a mile away from me,’ she said after their wedding in 2016. ‘He lived there for years and years and we never met. So he’s got a house and I’ve got a house.
‘He is a fantastic collector of books and what I would call junk – and he call wonderful memorabilia – and fantastic pictures. In his house, you have to walk through a sort of tunnel of books to get to the loo.’
She added: ‘He’s got a lot of stuff and I’m rather neat and tidy and I don’t want all that stuff in my house. and he doesn’t want me tidying it up.’ miss Leith has two grownup children from her first marriage, daughter Li-Da and son Danny.
In the interview, miss Leith – who has just released her latest novel, The Lost Son – defended her fellow Great British Bake Off judge Paul Hollywood from criticism that he is ‘nasty’.
She said: ‘I don’t think Paul is nasty. Paul is scary because he has this wonderful ability of just keeping quiet. He just doesn’t say anything. He just looks at you with those steely blue eyes and it must be terrifying, whereas I gabble away. I always want to fill the silence.’
The full interview appears in this week’s Hello! magazine.
‘He’s a collector of what I would call junk’