In the second half of her new one-woman show, Everything in Moderation, Prue Leith opens up the floor to questions from the audience. 

Naturally, many of them are related to the Great British Bake Off, of which Prue has been a judge since 2017. 

There’s one question in particular which comes up surprisingly often. And no, it’s not how to avoid the dreaded soggy bottom. 

“The most asked question is what colour are Paul Hollywood’s eyes really,” says Prue. 

“I have to defend him slightly and tell them they are real, they’re not contact lenses,” she says of their almost other-worldly piercing blue. 

While she’s best known for Bake Off and her other television work - and her colourful eyewear and accessories - Prue, 82, has had an enormously varied career as a restaurateur, caterer, novelist, and food writer for the Daily Mail, Sunday Express and the Guardian.

Born in South Africa, she has spent most of her working life in London. Having decided that she wanted to carve out a career in food, in 1960 she started a catering business supplying business lunches, parties and events.  

In 1969 she opened the Michelin-starred restaurant Leiths in Notting Hill, which she ran for 25 years, and in 1975 founded Leiths School of Food and Wine which trains professional chefs and amateur cooks.  

She helped to found the Prue Leith College – now the Prue Leith Culinary Institute - in South Africa in the mid-90s.

“I think that most people think that I make my living by eating cake on telly, which is perfectly true and reasonable, why would they think anything else, because that’s the only thing anybody ever sees of me,” she says, speaking over Zoom from her home in the Cotswolds. 

“But the truth is I’ve had the most extraordinary and wonderful life, and a very long life, so I’ve had lots of time to do lots of things. 

“I’ve written eight novels and I’ve written an autobiography and I’ve chaired lots of companies and lots of charities and I’ve founded a few charities, so my life is full of stuff. 

“I’ve had a lot to do with the arts, a lot to do with education. I chaired an education company that turned round failing state schools and we were really successful at it, and it was a huge part of my life for a long time. And I’ve sat on all sorts of posh boards,” says Prue. 

In 1995 she was elected chair of the RSA (Royal Society of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce) where she initiated and led the successful campaign to use the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square for exhibitions of contemporary sculpture and set up the charity Focus on Food, devoted to improving the teaching of cooking in schools. 

And she chaired the government’s School Food Trust, founded in 2007, which oversaw the improvement in the healthiness and quality of the food bought, cooked and served in schools. 

While Prue has done book-related Q&As before, she’s never appeared in venues on the scale of Norwich Theatre Royal, which she visits on March 19, and Ipswich Regent, where she will be later on in March.  

As is evident, Nothing In Moderation is an apt title for the show as there will be plenty to talk about. 

“My nature is to grab any opportunity to do anything,” says Prue. “The show’s not called Nothing In Moderation for nothing. I find saying 'no' impossible and one day I was having lunch with the producer, who produces all of Joanna Lumley’s TV shows and also her in-person stage shows, and I was chattering away, I suppose telling disaster stories or something or other and he said I should have a stage show - and so I just said yes immediately.” 

Giving us a taste of what to expect, in the first half of the show Prue will be sharing anecdotes from her career.  

An alternative title might have been It Shouldn’t Happen to a Caterer. 

“Mostly we get funny stories about disasters in the catering world, about feeding the royal family, because I’m convinced that as soon as a royal comes into the room things start to go wrong - the royal gremlin,” she teases.  

“And so I share royal stories with people and I share disaster stories with people and most of the disaster stories end up happy because if I’ve got a talent for anything it’s for winging it, I’m really, really good at it,” she laughs. 

Then, in the second half, chaired by producer Clive Tulloch, Prue answers questions from the audience. 

As well as lots of questions about her TV work, which has also included the Great British Menu, there are other areas of Prue’s life which are also of great interest. 

“Somebody will probably ask me about women in business, about the glass ceiling thing, because I was at the forefront of women at the top, so they’re interested in that. And then they’ll probably ask me about adoption because I have a Cambodian daughter, Li-Da, who is now 48 [they explored her roots in the moving Channel 4 documentary Journey With My Daughter],” she says.  

Prue admits that if she’s asked she can “bang on for 20 minutes” about her passion - “Worrying about children’s schools, children’s food in schools and education for children in schools.” 

“So it’s a very mixed bag and the general reaction of everybody is ‘oh my god I had no idea that you did so many different things, I had no idea you wrote novels’. Why would they know? The truth of the matter is that if it wasn’t for Bake Off, I wouldn’t have the luck to be able to do this show.”  

Prue says that she’s looking forward to coming to Norwich where she has family – and, of course, through their careers in food, she’s friends with Delia Smith and follows the fortunes of the Canaries. 

“Once, years ago, I came to see a football match with Delia and they had had a really bad run, the Canaries had been losing match after match.  

“Anyhow, they had just sacked their manager and they hadn’t got a new one yet - that match was the first one after they had no manager, so they put it into temporary management, the man who used to be their most famous goalie [Bryan Gunn]. And you know what, they won.  

“If you’ve seen her at a football match she’s not the Delia you used to see on the telly, she was beside herself shouting and yelling at them and it was just so exciting. It was the only time I’d ever been to a football match in my life, but I did see how much it matters to her.”  

The Great British Bake Off is one of those TV shows which has become part of the fabric of the nation.  

When it launched in 2010, it was a cosy, gentler antidote to the likes of X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent. Although, of course, things can sometimes get heated in the famous tent - remember the bin-gate saga? 

Prue joined the show following Mary Berry's departure when it (controversially at the time) moved to Channel Four, with Noel Fielding and Sandi Toksvig stepping into Mel and Sue’s shoes. 

And another change to the presenting line-up is in the offing, as Noel’s current co-host Matt Lucas recently announced that he was leaving  

“It’s sad, but Matt has so much to do, and so many offers,” says Prue. “We’re all going to miss him and I’ve no idea who’s going to follow him. But we will see a lot more of Matt,” she says.  

And despite there now having been 13 series – a baker’s dozen, how fitting – of the Great British Bake Off, there is still plenty of amateur baking talent out there waiting to be put in the spotlight. Especially since during the Covid lockdowns many of us turned to nurturing sourdough starters and baking banana bread for comfort in uncertain times. 

“That’s what Paul says, that he thinks that the standard of baking has gone up because people have had much more time to practice and there’s a bigger pool of bakers to choose from,” says Prue.  

Around her filming schedule, Prue has found the time to publish two books this year. Bliss on Toast is packed with delicious ideas for elevating the humble slice of bread to something a bit special.  

And she’s updated her autobiography, which was originally published about 10 years ago, and is now called I’ll Try Anything Once. 

“Since then, I’ve sold my house, I’ve got a new husband [John Playfair], we’ve got Bake Off. My life has changed a lot,” says Prue.   

That includes her becoming a star across the Atlantic, where The Great British Baking Show, as it’s called in the US, is streamed on Netflix.  

And she and Paul have already filmed the first series of The Great American Baking Show for Roku, presented by Ellie Kemper and Zach Cherry, which will be released soon. 

“I’m now better known in America than I am here,” she says. “We’ve already filmed The Great American Baking Show so there’s lots going on with Bake Off and long may it last, because it’s such fun.” 

Prue Leith: Nothing In Moderation is at Norwich Theatre Royal on March 19 at 7.30pm. Box office: 01603 630000/norwichtheatre.org. She will also be at Ipswich Regent Theatre on March 25 at 7.30pm. Box office: 01473 433100/ipswichtheatres.co.uk