Retired Bake Off judge Prue Leith 'thinks about death a lot' after stepping down from Channel 4 cooking show
Prue Leith has opened up about death and how she plans to enjoy her retirement.
Retired Bake Off judge Prue Leith has spoken of how she 'thinks about death a lot' after stepping down from the hit cooking show. The 86-year-old, who starred in the tent alongside fellow judge Paul Hollywood, announced she was stepping down from the show last month.
And now, she has shared how she is spending the early months of her retirement and "enjoying the rest of her life".
"I think about death a lot," she told the Mirror. "I look ahead and see death. Funnily enough I think it’s something that old people do. It’s a vast old age and I’m quite astonished to be there. People think of old age as such a tragedy. But, honestly, for a lot of people it’s just like the rest of life."
With a somewhat pessimistic outlook, the cookery chief said she fears AI, or war, "will see us off", but is not concerned as she won't be around to see it. "It’s quite comforting - I won't have to worry about that," she went on. "I don’t have long left. Ten years if I’m lucky. I need to use them well."
However, confirming she "loves to work", Prue is still busy, jetting off to her native South Africa to film a new travelogue.
And the new project is set to see her reunite with a familiar face from the Bake Off tent in the form of Sandi Toksvig, who left the programme in 2020.
"Although Sandi left the tent six years ago, they’ve remained close pals and long talked about doing more telly work together," The Sun reported. Prue’s departure from Bake Off gave her more free time to explore other work she had to keep on the back burner."
It is believed the new series will air on Channel 4 later in the year, around the same time as the next - 17th - series of Bake Off, which will be judged by Hollywood and new sidekick, Nigella Lawson. Lawson, 66, will stand alongside Hollywood when filming on the new series begins in April.
Leith said she had been long considering stepping back from the Bake Off tent when she finally made the announcement, and told The Spectator: "When I joined nine years ago, I thought, since I was in my mid-70s, that I'd be lucky to manage two years. At that age, my mother was deaf as a post and away with the fairies, believing her son was her father and that her cat was the one she'd had 40 years before.
"But my marbles stayed more or less in place and there seemed no good reason to give up a job I loved. Finally, though, the desire to work less and play more got to me. Bake Off and its offshoots such as The Great American Baking Show and even the Christmas specials are all filmed in the summer, which has meant I could never have a summer holiday."