Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Prue cooks up a drama
BAKE Off’s Prue Leith is preparing a drama trilogy she hopes will be “the new Downton Abbey” of Sunday nights.
The 77-year-old is helping to land big ratings on Channel 4’s version of the cake show, with co-judge Paul Hollywood and hosts Sandi Toksvig and Noel Fielding.
As she cooks up her new hit, she tells us: “I’m finishing a trilogy of novels. It starts in the war, and there’s love stories through three generations of the same family.
“My big ambition is for it to be the new Downton Abbey.
“I don’t want to be in it, I want to write it.
“Maybe a little cameo performance. A lot of it is based on personal experience – especially the middle book, that was my period, cooking in England from the 60s to now.”
Prue even has plans for one of the main roles in the drama.
She says: “There’s a character in the first book, very pompous, ex-army, and I think I’d like Nathaniel Parker, a lovely actor, to play that.”
Prue says she has no problem with all the attention from Bake Off. She adds: “I rather enjoy it. It’s an ego trip. People who stop you in the supermarket are really nice.” But Prue never watches the programme.
She says: “I’m so vain, all I can think is, ‘Why won’t they stop filming my double chin?’.”