Prue Leith: A Life Through Food

The Food Programme

BBC

Arts, Food

4.4 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 26 September 2021

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

She might be best known as the colourfully clad host of the Great British Bake Off, but Dame Prue Leith's accomplishments during her six decades in the food industry are vast and varied.

She's enjoyed success as a cook, restaurateur, businesswoman, broadcaster, campaigner, food writer and novelist; and in conversation with Sheila Dillon, on a balmy summer afternoon on the terrace of her Cotswolds home, Prue shares the lessons she's learned from her career so far.

We also hear from Prue's niece Peta Leith, a pastry chef and food writer with whom she recently collaborated on the book 'The Vegetarian Kitchen' - and from Dr Rupy Aujla, the NHS GP who started the Culinary Medicine UK programme teaching doctors to cook, and creator of the podcast 'The Doctor's Kitchen' linking better health to good cooking and eating, who is Prue's co-host on the television series ‘Cook Clever, Waste Less’.

Presented by Sheila Dillon Produced by Lucy Taylor in Bristol

Transcript

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0:49.7	Welcome to our world, from cooking to culture, politics to pleasure. We hope you enjoy it.
0:57.0	Many people listening to this will think of you primarily as a broadcaster, you know, the Bekoff, but you often describe yourself as a business woman. How do you sort of, you know, who are you?
1:09.7	Please, would you say?
1:18.0	Chef, broadcaster, You know, author, novelist, when you worked it out Sheila, tell me. Yeah, you know.
1:19.0	I hope she doesn't mind me saying this but she's kind of like the Madonna or the Kylie of our food world really because she doesn't appear to lose touch despite
1:32.2	essentially working through a number of different generations.
1:35.7	She's done so much and a lot of people probably only know her as this rainbow-colored wonderful presenter on
1:41.9	Bakeoff which of course she is.
1:43.4	But actually I think her career has been so impressive before that.
1:46.8	She really has done a lot to change the food in Britain, I think.
1:50.7	People say you're so optimistic and so gun-ho really and I think that is just I'm
	...

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