Dame Prue Leith has said she “does not have much longer” as she is in her mid-eighties.
Last year, The Great British Bake Off judge announced that she was taking a break from the celebrity edition of the show after realising that the filming schedule had become too intense.
In March, Leith also revealed that she was struggling to hear and that she has started to use hearing aids.
Speaking to Holly Rubenstein on The Travel Diaries podcast, the 85-year-old restaurateur said: “I haven’t got much longer. I’m 85 and I want to spend as much time as I can with him.”
She was speaking about her husband John Playfair, whom she married in 2016.
“So, if we are filming abroad, or like next week, we’re going to New York, because I’ve got to publicise the American baking show, then I’m now old enough for my agent to say ‘I’m sorry, but she has to ring her husband, because she’s 85, she needs someone to carry the bags,’” said Leith. “She doesn’t quite say, ‘She needs a carer’ but it’s pretty close.”
Leith has been part of The Great British Bake Off since its move from BBC to Channel 4 in 2017, replacing the expert role formerly held by Mary Berry.
Announcing her hiatus from the celebrity series in September last year, Leith told The Mirror: “I was in a new house and I hardly saw the garden, I hardly saw my family and I never had a summer holiday.”
In order to stop Leith from quitting, Bake Off producers agreed to change the star’s filming schedule so she could have more time off.
“So, I got what I wanted, which is to do less,” she said. “I’m so grateful to Love Productions because they’ve been very accommodating.”
It was announced that Leith would not take part in a future celebrity edition of the programme, raising money for cancer charities.
In a comment made to The Independent, the judge said: “I absolutely love working on Bake Off and am looking forward to filming the next series and meeting our new bakers.
“I am only stepping back from the Celebrity series, which is just a question of the filming commitment involved as we make these shows back-to-back.”
Leith firmly shut down rumours that she was quitting the series, stating: “It’s absolutely not true at all! What I'm not doing this year is the celebrity one.
“I absolutely love working on Bake Off and am looking forward to filming the next series and meeting our new bakers.”
“I am only stepping back from the celebrity series, which is just a question of the filming commitment involved as we make these shows back-to-back,” she said.
Last month, Kate Garraway, Roman Kemp, Amelia Dimoldenberg, and Maxine Peake were among the stars taking part in Celebrity Great British Bake Off.
Caroline Waldegrave OBE stepped in as a replacement on the judging panel alongside Paul Hollywood.
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