A Love Affair with PRUE LEITH
A Love Affair with
Prue Leith
Collette Fairweather interviews her culinary idol about her hilarious (and rather scandalous) autobiography
Prue Leith, in my humble opinion, co-produced the greatest cookbook ever printed - Leith’s Cookery Bible. It is the one book that never leaves my kitchen, each page lovingly thumbed; it contains every recipe a foodie could ever hope to cook. I placed the author and her culinary prowess on a pedestal on the day I served my very first Coq Au Vin. I thought I knew Prue, the way some fans believe, somehow, that they know their idols. But, having just read her new autobiography, Relish – My Life on a Plate, her candid confessions left me both stunned and enlightened. So it was that, when I had the chance to meet my heroine at her beautiful north Gloucestershire manor, there was a good deal to chew over. Prue’s professional achievements boggle the brain. After devouring her book, I now know how she became a CBE, author of five novels and countless cookery columns and books; how she won a Michelin star, was awarded Veuve Cliquot Business Woman of the Year, and became a judge on the BBC hit TV series, The Great British Menu (oh, and she’s also sat on the boards of companies such as British Rail, Whitbread, Woolworths, and Halifax: I scarcely have room to mention her charity work and involvement in the arts). But such accolades, although plentiful, do not dominate her tale. Intertwined with anecdotes of professional success is the most unlikely love story, that of an affair with an unobtainable, much older man; a man she
86
Cotswold Homes Magazine
admits she should have viewed as an uncle, not as a lover. Yet his pillow talk provided the foundation for all her success and his ongoing support and guidance structured her life. This partnership developed into marriage, parenthood and - inevitably - widowhood. Now, unbelievably, I’m in Prue’s own kitchen. Sweeping through the room, kicking doors shut with her heel as she makes me tea, she settles at the kitchen table, sliding her Bengal tiger of a cat from her chair. I steal glances through a beautiful bay window that frames the Cotswold hills, with not one other property obstructing the bucolic vista. Taking a sip of her coffee, my idol leans back on her chair, engages eye contact, and says, “Go!” So, without further ado, I begin with the obvious question: Why write an autobiography now? “I have been writing one thing or another for years, and my publishers have been asking after it, as they have heard me talking about all my catering calamities,” she says. “They wanted a James Herriot of the catering world; my life in disasters! The book talks more about the ‘Leiths’ restaurant’s disasters, rather than our great triumphs, as it’s more interesting and funnier. But I didn’t want to write a book that was unfair to the staff, because I wouldn’t have won a Michelin Star, employed 500 people and won business woman of the year if we were all rubbish!” There is a wealth of information in the book; so many names and places. How on earth did Prue start such a project?
“I wrote it straight off, although it takes longer to write a biography than a novel. There were several drafts, as I had to remove 30,000 words and the publishers didn’t want so much about my business views. It was felt that people were more interested in the food, love affair, and my daughter’s adoption. I was a bit sorry about that. On the other hand, it did sound like Prue on her soapbox…” I mention my surprise that Prue’s novels didn’t feature more heavily than they did… “I had a lot about the novels, a whole chapter in fact, about how I got into writing through the cookery books. All writing is a good discipline, but as a journalist you are constantly reducing, whereas with cookery books you need to be so accurate and clear, otherwise the recipes simply don’t work. (CF: I recall a very amusing anecdote of Prue printing the incorrect quantities for marmalade in a national paper, with hilarious effects). However, something had to go and the novels really speak for themselves.” I note that I found the book very honest, in that Prue invited the reader to know the truth about her love affair. I ask if she feels that her success was partly because she was loved and supported by a man who couldn’t encroach on her time and career? “I never thought about that at the time. I never thought ‘Isn’t this lucky!?’ People said, ‘How could you not have wanted him to marry you?’, and I think it’s because for the first ten years I