This is Spectator Radio and you're listening to Table Talk with Olivia Potts and Lara Prendergast.

Hello and welcome to the Spectator Food and Drink podcast. I'm Olivia Potts and I'm here with

Lara Prendergast. Lara, what have you been eating this

week? Livya, I've just been in Gascany, so it's the capital of foie gras, so quite a lot of

foie gras, although we were actually on holiday of a friend who's allergic to poultry. So he wasn't able

to eat any of any of it, which was a bit of a shame. How about you? What have you been cooking? Well, we're going into wedding seasons, so I've been making thousands of canopets and hundreds of layers of cakes

for wedding cakes and shredding shoulders of lamps about as glamorous as it sounds. Not quite as

charming as being on the other side of the wedding, I suspect, but good fun nonetheless. This week,

we are delighted to be joined by Prue Leith. Prue is a restaurateur, chef, caterer, entrepreneur, broadcaster, businesswoman

and writer. She set up the world-renowned Leith School of Food and Wine, Leith's Dining, overhauled

the British Rail Sandwich and has written 12 cookery books and seven novels.

Her new book, Prue, my all-time favourite recipes, is out now.

And Prue has, of course, presented the Great British menu and most recently the Great British

Bake-off.

Prue, welcome to the spectator's Table Talk podcast.

Oh, it's lovely to be here.

Let's start at the beginning.

You grew up in South

Africa. How did that ground you or not in food? Well, the thing about South African cooking,

if you came with an English background, you know, all white people in South Africa are

divided into the Dutch Afrikaans and English speaking.

And I was firmly in the English camp, so we had the most boring English, but not very good

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