Dame Prue Leith had admitted that she “can’t really hear at all” and has started to wear hearing aids.
The Great British Bake Off judge, 85, was left red-faced after forgetting to put the hearing devices in as she addressed students during a Q&A at Cambridge Union on Monday.
Dressed in one of her trademark brightly coloured outfits, she was forced to interrupt the conversation as she was unable to follow it.
“Sorry, I am a bit deaf so I am struggling to hear a bit,” she explained.
“This is so embarrassing because I really can't hear at all. My husband is so cross with me as I have just been given some hearing aids and I never remember to put them in. I am so sorry.”
Dame Prue previously revealed that her late mother also had issues with wearing hearing aids as she got them too late in life.
Writing in The Telegraph in 2021, she said: “This is a really common problem. When my mother was in her 80s, she was beginning to go deaf and senile at the same time.
“She was convinced we all mumbled, and actors didn't speak clearly anymore. The problem was that we'd left it too late.
“By the time we'd persuaded her to wear hearing aids, she'd forget what they were, fish one out shouting, ‘What's this thing doing in my ear?’ and hurl all two grand's worth across the room.”
Leith’s latest health issue comes after earlier this year she declared that “old age stinks”.
Appearing on a special episode of ITV’s Loose Women titled This is 70+, the South African native made her feelings clear as she complained: “It takes me 10 minutes to get myself out of the bed in the morning and if I don’t do the exercises, I can’t move! There's all sorts of things that are wrong with old age. You know, you are very conscious that this is nearly the end.”
The popular television personality did say that the flip side of being more aware of your own mortality is “you then decide that you're going to make the most of it and have fun.”
She also noted that you “don't care what people think as much as you did.”
