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Desert Island Discs

Dame Prue Leith, writer and broadcaster

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.413.7K Ratings

🗓️ 19 December 2021

⏱️ 36 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Dame Prue Leith is a broadcaster, writer, former restaurateur and a judge on the television show the Great British Bake Off. Prue was born in Cape Town, South Africa, during the era of Apartheid. After leaving school she moved to Paris to study at the Sorbonne, but decided that her future lay in food, and took a Cordon Bleu cookery course in London. She set up her own catering business from her bedsit, where space was so tight that she washed lettuces in the bath. In 1969 she opened Leith’s, her own fine dining restaurant, in Notting Hill in west London. Leith’s was awarded a Michelin star in the 1980s. She went on to write columns and cookbooks and became a regular broadcaster about food, on shows including the Great British Menu. In 1975 she opened Leith’s School of Food and Wine which trains professional chefs and amateur cooks. Prue replaced Mary Berry as a judge on the Great British Bake Off in 2017. She has written eight novels and lives with her husband in Gloucestershire. DISC ONE: Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds by The Beatles DISC TWO: Ugly Duckling by Danny Kaye DISC THREE: Nkosi Sikelel iAfrika by Ladysmith Black Mambazo DISC FOUR: Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (I) composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and performed by Sir Neville Marriner (violin), Academy Of St Martin-in-the-Fields Orchestra and conducted by David Willcocks DISC FIVE: 16 Tons by Tennessee Ernie Ford DISC SIX: Skylark by Aretha Franklin DISC SEVEN: Chopin, Nocturne No. 2, op 9 in E flat major, played by Elisabeth Leonskaja DISC EIGHT: Big Spender by Shirley MacLaine BOOK CHOICE: Ulysses by James Joyce LUXURY ITEM: Writing materials CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Nkosi Sikelel iAfrika by Ladysmith Black Mambazo Presenter Lauren Laverne Producer Paula McGinley

Transcript

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0:00.0

BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts

0:04.9

Hello, I'm Lauren LeVern and this is the Desert Island Disks Podcast.

0:08.8

Every week I ask my guests to choose the 8 tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take

0:13.3

with them if they were cast away to a desert island.

0:16.7

And for right reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast.

0:20.9

I hope you enjoy listening.

0:45.2

My cast away this week is the chef, illustrator, writer and broadcaster, Dame Proulieith.

0:51.4

She'd already forged a formidable reputation in culinary circles and was contemplating

0:55.9

a quieter life when, in 2017, everything changed.

1:00.4

She was invited to become a judge on the Great British Bake-Off.

1:04.0

She was 77, an age when women don't get offered a slot on primetime television, let alone

1:08.8

a show which regularly attracts many millions of viewers.

1:12.2

She quickly won a new generation of fans with her vibrant eyewear, pithy observations,

1:17.3

an on-screen chemistry with fellow Judge Paul Hollywood.

1:21.0

She fell in love with food as a young woman, not in her native South Africa, but in Paris

1:25.5

in the early 60s.

1:27.0

She moved to London to study at the Cordon Bleau Cookery School and set up a catering

1:31.1

business from her bed sit.

1:33.0

It was a success despite the occasional disaster, like the time she left a swarry as

1:37.2

worth of live lobsters on the Picardilly Line.

1:40.3

She opened her first restaurant in 1969, which she followed with a cookery school.

1:45.0

Her broadcasting career started with a two-minute slot on the today programme here on Radio

...

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