What about the betrayed wives, Prue?
One minute she is politely judging rhubarb jelly on BBC2’s Great British Menu series (‘delicious!’), the next she is being hailed as a scarlet woman, a monster, a cheating heartbreaker.
As the row over the way she behaved five decades ago rages on, I suspect that Prue Leith must be amazed to find herself in the headlines this week. Me again? How? What have I done this time?
At the Henley Literary Festival, the respectable 75 - year- old restaurateur, author and television cookery judge remarked that the 13-year affair she had with a married man when she was much younger had boosted her career.
Leith, one of Britain’s most successful businesswomen, said that while the long-term relationship with South African writer and businessman Rayne Kruger nourished her sexually and romantically, it also set her free to concentrate on her job.
This helped her to make her fortune because she could focus on her business without the demands of being a housewife or mother.
In other words, she could behave like a man.
YOU can see how the situation would work rather brilliantly for an ambitious young woman such as Prue. no kids, no complications and no conscience. not to mention no contact with him once he went home to his wife.
It was compartmentalised and organised, with no drift or hassles from his private life silting into hers, how very excellent. Pass me that plan for world domination.
She didn’t have to watch him play football or be nice to his mother or make plans or worry about their future. She just lived for herself — and it is hard not to have a sneaking admiration for her chutzpah.
The affair started when Prue was 22 (he was 40) and she opened her first restaurant seven years later. It was an arrangement that suited everyone — except, of course, the wife. Like mistresses everywhere, Prue was the invisible cuckoo in the nest, plump and satiated, feeding secretly on the lifeblood of another family.
Year after year she was silently robbing another woman of her happiness and security — and what career is worth that? Of course, the despicable behaviour of the cheating male goes without saying. Yet is it all really that simple, so clear cut?
Leith first admitted to all this in her autobiography Relish, published three years ago. We learn that Kruger was married to nan, Prue’s mother’s best friend. nan was a widow, a mother of three and 20 years older than Kruger when they married and moved to england from South Africa. Prue went to school and shared a dorm with one of his daughters. The families were so close that the affair, said Leith, was ‘practically incest’.
eventually, Kruger divorced nan, married Prue, they had one child together and adopted another. Poor nan, doubly betrayed by both husband and friend, somehow found it in her heart to forgive them.
She was even gracious enough to ensure that all parties eventually remained friends. Very few affairs have such a civilised outcome — and that is to her credit, not theirs.
Still, the wonder about affairs is that no one ever learns. They seem to be inevitable, like catching a cold. Someone you know is always suffering from one.
I remember a time when girlfriends would agonise about their affairs with older married men. One had a long-running affair which everyone knew about except the wife. When she did find out, he went running back to her. After giving up the best years of her life, my pal is now a husk, with only her dogs for company. Was it all worth it?
now that we are all older and wiser, some of my married friends struggle with the other end of the problem.
That’s not to say that women don’t cheat, too — but married men seem keener t o enjoy life f r om t he perspective of a single man.
After watching this week’s episode of the BBC drama Doctor Foster, many women would have wanted to give their husbands a slap, even though they had done nothing wrong. Just because.
SURAnne JOneS stars as a GP who suspects her husband of having an affair. A blonde hair on his scarf, a stick of lip balm in his pocket, his silently hurrying away to check messages on his mobile phone. I don’t want to give too much away for those who have not seen it (all the episodes are on iPlayer) but this claustrophobic depiction of unravelling lives brings home the trauma an affair can bring.
Look at Prue Leith now: the picture of establishment respectability with her salt-and-pepper coiffure, her elegance and confidence.
She is a Commander of the British empire, a doughty campaigner who tried to improve the sandwiches on British Rail trains, someone who is fearless in her views on roast lamb or the correct consistency of syllabub.
Yet she is also a woman who once had the merciless conceit to believe that her happiness was all that mattered. Is that what it takes to succeed in life? I really hope not.