Welcome to Metro.co.uk‘s The Big Questions, where we ask, well, the big questions (and the smaller ones too) and this week, we’re diving deep with Dame Prue Leith.
The 82-year-old is a culinary icon and legend of British culture, from her critiques as judge on Great British Bake Off to vehicular troubles during the Queens Jubilee parade (yes, even a Dame breaks down in a Jaguar).
She’s sharing her knowledge of all that is good in food as a judge for Uber Eats Restaurant Of The Year Awards, which saw the ‘tastebud for hire’ whittle down thousands of takeaway joints to find the crème de la crème of the bunch, with London’s The Salad Project crowned the winner at Thursday night’s ceremony.
‘I sometimes just feel like this big, paid set of taste buds,’ Dame Prue laughs of her gig. ‘What do you do for a living? I eat.’
Not a bad way to be, to be honest.
Here we unpack her latest endeavours, including an upcoming cook book dedicated to toast (one of the holy carbs, in our opinion), her famous – or infamous – ‘worth the calories’ quip, and what she really thinks of fame.
So, you’re a judge for the first-ever Uber Eats Restaurant Awards, not a bad job?
I was fascinated by this competition, because, you know, I’ve spent a lot of time eating in really smart restaurants and actually, most people don’t eat at very smart restaurants, they’re just too expensive and getting more so every minute. And although I’m still very enamoured at great chefs who do wonderful food, I think what matters far more is that we want to be able to get good food for the rest of us, for ordinary people.
As people eat out more and more, it’s really important we have innovative restaurateurs and food providers who want to do interesting, good takeaway food.
Most of my life, takeaway food has been pretty synonymous with pretty poor food, you might be able to get good Indian or good Chinese, but you were very unlikely to get a good delivered burger or pizza.
What impressed me about these entries is that the food has been much more original and often more suitable for delivery – bowls of soup or wraps and much healthier and much better looking.
In fact, I had a party the other day to celebrate my Damehood – it was actually announced 18 months ago, but I finally got the gong a few weeks ago – so we had a party at home and I just got food trucks and we just had a garden party, but we had Turkish wraps, pizza and ice cream and really good coffee, and cocktails; we had a guy who does nothing but oysters.
[For the awards] we had a huge tasting session all the judges, there were salads and seafood and noodles and pizza and burgers and wraps and bowls. It’s a competition which starts with nominations from the public. So it isn’t a lot of fancy food critics going around and happening to hit a restaurant on its bad night, or its good night. It’s masses, thousands, in fact, of ordinary people who use that restaurant all the time. We ended up spending the day just kind of frantically eating the most amazing food and more impressively meeting the owners and people behind it.
But then, with your upcoming book you’ve paired it right back with toast.
Well, the next book is called Bliss On Toast and, I don’t want to talk about it too much because it isn’t officially out yet, but it just stems from my thinking ‘what do I like most?’ Especially on Sunday night when you’re quite tired.
You think how often people are asked, ‘what would be your favorite food, if you’re on death row’ or something. It’s always sausages or mash, very simple food. And so Bliss On Toast panders to my belief that almost anything can be eaten on toast. If it’s delicious, it’ll be even better on toast.
So many people would be putting their feet up at this stage of their career. I feel like you’re just putting your foot on the accelerator and doing more and more and more.
Well, I’ve got to go fast, I haven’t got much more time, have I [laughs]? I’ve got to do it at a run.
I’ve got lots of energy, so that’s good. Although these days, I have to say that I have a little kip in the afternoon if I can.
Now I say to myself, Winston Churchill had a nap every afternoon, even in the middle of the war.
Speaking earlier of your Damehood, you were a part of the Queen’s Jubilee parade…
That broke down…
Well, yes…but what was that like to be involved?
Well, it was rather nice, because the whole idea of the parade was that it should be the people’s parade and so all the sort of things that happened on that parade, apart from the professional show at the end, which, you know, had professional acrobats, were community things. People bid, can I come with my dance troupe, so they were local efforts.
One of them was the convertible Jaguar club, of people who owned their own Jag, most of them would be restored themselves. And so mine belonged to a farmer, and his wife drove us, and the Jag did not like going as slowly as we had to go. So it stopped. But it was very good fun and the chaps who pushed us were charming.
You may disagree with this, but you’re an absolute national icon. I’d love to know your approach to fame and being in the spotlight – was there a moment where it dawned on you that you were someone that people recognise?
It sort of had happened gradually. When I was on the Great British Menu, which a lot of people watched, I would occasionally be stopped in supermarkets, are you that lady off the telly? [Someone once asked] something about a a dessert, which was based on a lemon drizzle cake. And she said, quite aggressively, ‘You’re that lady off the telly, aren’t you?’ She said, ‘but you didn’t like that lemon drizzle thing’. And I said, ‘yes, I did. I just thought it had too much lemon in it. It was just too sour’. And she said ‘no, it wasn’t, it was delicious’. I tasted it and you didn’t! She said, ‘it was delicious. I can tell.’ [laughs].
There have always been people who know me but yes, now obviously with Great British Bake Off I get much more attention, but I’m quite an egotist. I enjoy it. I like the attention. I don’t understand why people wouldn’t – of course I can understand if you were really really famous so famous that you couldn’t go to the supermarket and you couldn’t get anywhere.
I’ve only once had a taste of that. And that’s when I was at the Good Food Show in Birmingham doing a demonstration. I had to stay in the artist’s green room because I wanted to get around the stores and see what was new and what else everybody was doing, so I set up to walk through there.
And of course, I got about 200 yards and I couldn’t move because people wanted me to sign their books or to talk to me. And I thought, this is crazy. I can’t go to the Good Food Show even though I’m at The Good Food Show. So yeah, it must be awful to never be able to, if you’re really famous, leave home without a huge entourage of people pushing other people away, which I’d absolutely hate.
I love your honesty on saying, I quite enjoy [the fame].
It’s not as if, you know, if you’re a famous politician there’s going to be half the world who hates you and half the world who loves you – but very few people hate cake.
I think I occasionally get somebody who doesn’t like me and fair enough.
I remember when I got the [Bake Off] job, somebody said, ‘Oh my god, you’re going to replace that wonderful Mary Berry with that woman with that terrible, posh, horrible voice?’
And I rather agree with him, I think I do have a posh, horrible voice.
In the past there has been reaction to you saying something is ‘worth the calories’. Do you feel you have to watch what you say?
I used to say that something’s worth the calories or not worth the calories, because for me, if something is absolutely so beautifully cooked, and so delicious, it would be almost a crime not to eat it. And so I say to myself, it’s worth the calories, I’ll have it, even though it shouldn’t be eating it.
I am slightly persuaded by the organisation Beat, which is about eating disorders. They said, please don’t use that phrase, because it makes people who are really struggling with obesity, or health issues, it makes them feel guilty. It’s upsetting.
I [said I] won’t say it anymore, so I don’t say it.
I think you have to be a bit careful because somebody’s going to take it the wrong way. But I just feel the answer is, don’t read Twitter, really.
In the past you’ve been incredibly open certain experiences, for instance speaking about your abortion in your memoir. Have you had people thank you for using your platform in that way?
Yes, I think people appreciate honesty. I mean, I think the thing about my autobiography was, I thought, well, I’ve had a very interesting life, but if I were to write about it, I better write the truth. I wouldn’t want to lie.
I thought really, what should go into it is anything that’s interesting, and what should stay out of it is anything that’s boring, and there are an awful lot of autobiographies which are just a long list of the achievements of the writer and all the detail of every meeting and especially business biographies, they bang on and on about all the people they’ve ever met and it’s just boring.
So I thought, well, I’ll put in the interesting stuff and I’ll leave out the boring bits, or pass over it as quickly as I can, otherwise just don’t do it. I’m glad I did it, I mean at the time there was a lot of… it’s very easy for tabloid newspapers to say ‘a life of sex, drugs and rock and roll’. When you actually read the book it amounts to extremely few all of those things – not enough, anyway.
You strike me as someone who laughs at this aspect of your line of work [that lands in the press].
I think if you don’t have any sense of humour it must be really difficult to live. I think you can’t take things too seriously.
Obviously, if people who are close to me, or I respect, say something negative, well then I do take notice.
You do have to listen to criticism. I think you just have to think, where does the criticism come from.
If it was coming from some poor guy who’s sitting on his own, being as vitriolic as he possibly can on his computer because he hasn’t got the courage to say that to your face, or put his name to it, do we really care what he thinks?
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