Her husband says she's a poster girl for geriatric sex. Just don't ask Prue Leith how often they do it!

His wife may be Queen of the Kitchen — of all the kitchens, really — but it is Mr Prue Leith who is leading this tour of the marital quarters. Suffice to say there is nothing beige here, either in the décor or the marriage.

The walls of the master bedroom, where Dame Prue is having her make-up done, are festooned with around 200 of her statement necklaces, the brightest and blingiest of which were bought by the man who doesn’t mind being called her toyboy.

John Playfair is 77 — his wife will be 84 tomorrow — and used to work in the fashion industry. He once helped dress Elizabeth Taylor (although possibly not in yellow plastic earrings he’d sourced online for £2 a pop), and when he met Prue, who had been widowed, he felt she needed more colour in her life.

‘She was on all these boards of big companies. Very corporate,’ he shudders. ‘Everything was black or navy. I bought her a pair of red reading glasses. She said, ‘I can’t!’, and I said, ‘Yes, you can’, and it’s been like that ever since.’

And how. Through the couple’s bedroom we go (aquamarine walls and ceiling), and on to another bedroom, The Red Room.

Icing on the cake: Prue with husband John Playfair

Icing on the cake: Prue with husband John Playfair

Prue on Bake Off with Paul Hollywood, left, Alison Hammond and Noel Fielding

Prue on Bake Off with Paul Hollywood, left, Alison Hammond and Noel Fielding

‘This is the banishment room, where she can send me if I misbehave,’ he explains.

John, a say-it-as-it-is Scot, is permanently banished from Prue’s bathroom (he has his own en suite), but rarely from her bed: ‘Often there are three of us in the bed: Prue, me and Prue’s laptop.’

A quick step over the tiger rug and we are in Prue’s dressing room, where the rails sing with vivid yellows and oranges, blues and pinks. ‘We call it a Pruesplosion,’ John says, proudly. He opens a drawer full of earrings, and a Pantone colour chart come to life.

‘Are you going to show her my knicker drawer, too?’ shouts Prue. He isn’t, but now she mentions it, I have to ask: ‘Are your undies all brightly coloured too, Prue?’

‘No, they are black and white from M&S. Very boring.’

This is an achievement, finding one thing that is boring about Dame Prue, and the man who shares her life.

It is eight years since Prue Leith eschewed a quiet retirement and accepted a job at the helm of The Great British Bake Off, replacing Mary Berry.

Although a completely different character (‘yes Mary is very proper; Prue is . . . improper,’ says John), she was certainly qualified for the job, having run a catering company, acclaimed cookery school and a Michelin starred restaurant, but John likes to think it was her vibrancy, reflected in her dress, that gave her the edge.

She once said she’d love to equal Mary Berry’s tenure on Bake Off – and here we are! When the next series is filmed, Prue will have spent longer at the Bake Off helm than the blessed Mary.

Now, she finally has her own cookery show, Prue’s Cotswold Kitchen. And on it, as well as the obligatory celeb guests, she’ll have her very own sidekick — John. She tells me she was thrilled to be able to include him because the show is filmed at their home, ‘and I worried he would resent the TV cameras taking over’.

By the end of our afternoon together, when John has spilled all the secrets about their sex life, she is rather regretting saying he could share the spotlight.

‘He’s such a chatterbox that I worry he is going to be the star of the show,’ she wails. ‘I’m supposed to be the TV star.’

Quite where Prue sits in the long history of our female TV cooks is up for debate. She’s appalled at the suggestion she might be more Fanny Cradock than Nigella Lawson. ‘I always found Fanny Cradock quite embarrassing, although like her I am often inappropriately dressed for cooking.’

Fanny famously cooked at the Royal Albert Hall in full evening attire. Prue’s clobber is more casual, but still ‘very far from chef’s whites’. In the first episode she trails her (colourful) cuffs in the flour.

Is she quite messy in the kitchen at home? I ask John. ‘F***ing shambles,’ he nods. ‘I’m forever saying ‘get your sleeves out’.’

No complaints about the food, though: ‘You never get the same meal twice. You can get leftovers, but with her creativity, it’s delicious.’ Presentation, though? He blows a raspberry. ‘I’d give her a 7 to 9. Her idea of heaven is a bowl and . . . splat.’ He mimes dispensing slop from a great height. ‘But add a big glass of wine and good company. That’s Prue.’

It’s not widely known, but before she hurled herself into a range of businesses and book writing, Prue fronted 36 episodes of a women’s magazine show on Tyne-Tees.

‘It was in the early days of colour TV. I hated the director, a very pernickety man who wanted everything scripted. I thought all TV was like that, so I really avoided doing any for 30 years.’

She does smile at the olden-days content, though, recalling testing out a ‘new-fangled’ hairdryer. And the early guest demonstrating how to use a thing called a freezer? It was a young Mary Berry.

‘I remember she had a pig’s trotter in hers, and it had been there for years,’ Prue laughs. Then Mary’s career took off. ‘She really took over from Fanny Cradock as the nation’s chef, although there was Delia (Smith), too.’

For three decades, Prue worked hard at becoming one of our most successful businesswomen. She was tempted back on screen in 2006 to be a judge on BBC Two’s Great British Menu (‘by then I’d realised I was well qualified’), which she did for ten years.

In 2017 there were shockwaves when Bake Off moved from the BBC to Channel 4, and Mary Berry decided not to go too. Prue was approached to replace her as one of the judges.

She phoned Mary. ‘I asked what Paul Hollywood was like, and she said he was so good, and knew so much about baking that he could really do the show on his own, so I’d need to get in there.’

Cooking up a storm: Young Prue in her restaurant kitchen

Cooking up a storm: Young Prue in her restaurant kitchen

Prue finally has her own cookery show, Prue’s Cotswold Kitchen

Prue finally has her own cookery show, Prue’s Cotswold Kitchen

And not let him take over?

‘Yes, exactly,’ Prue agrees.

She wouldn’t deem Mary a close friend (‘I define that by whether you come to each other’s houses’), but there is a definite respect there, and they are perhaps closer than some would like.

She tells me that a few years ago they appeared at a function, Prue wearing an apron saying ‘What would Mary do?’ and Mary wearing one saying ‘What would Prue do?’

John put it on social media, ‘and the BBC asked him to take it down. They think they own Mary, and didn’t want her fraternising with the enemy’.

Prue’s views on celebrity ‘friendships’ are interesting. She does have famous guests on her new show (her old Bake Off pal Sandi Toksvig included) but has insisted ‘they are either true friends or have some link to the Cotswolds.

‘It’s funny that TV is full of game shows where it’s the same celebrities on a circuit. When you meet famous people, you greet them as old friends — ‘how lovely to see you’ — because you want to be flattering to them. But it’s like a conspiracy where you all pretend you know each other.’

She must know Paul Hollywood well by now, though? ‘We have become closer in the past few years. I do like his new wife and we went to their wedding in Cyprus. And they have come to stay here. Paul wanted to land his helicopter in the garden — he is learning to fly — but the weather scuppered that and he had to come by road.’

What glorious hosts John and Prue must be. Although they married in 2016, they kept separate houses (‘but we always slept in the same bed,’ points out John) until two years ago, when they built their own forever home. ‘Our final home, designed to see us into our dotage,’ says Prue.

In the garage sits a Harley-Davidson. ‘I drive, but Prue hops on the back,’ says John. ‘I like to rev the engine when we are in town.’

John and Prue were always neighbours, but their paths simply never crossed. Home for her was the 11-bedroom mansion just a mile down the road, which she had bought with her first husband, Rayne Kruger, who died in 2002.

Eighteen years her senior, and married to her mother’s best friend, Rayne left his wife after he and Prue had conducted an illicit affair for 13 years. They went on to have two children and today she says Rayne was ‘a teacher, mentor, lover — a Svengali figure’.

‘I have been incredibly lucky with both my husbands — the two loves of my life,’ she says. ‘Rayne was a director of the business, so our work lives were entwined. John describes himself as my bag-carrier, but he’s so much more. He has supported me, encouraged me, given me confidence.

‘I’ve been very lucky because neither husband was resentful of my work. They never wanted to stop me. What I find disgusting about some men is that they want to stifle the woman. They might be attracted to, say, a woman’s bosoms, but as soon as they own them, they want them to cover up.’

Yet Rayne was a difficult man, particularly as he got older and more set in his ways. He became quite reclusive, and while Prue — juggling different directorships — would spend part of the week in London, when she came home she, too, rarely ventured out.

It meant that when Rayne died, she was isolated. ‘She had no friends,’ says John. ‘She had this great long address book — Prue knows everyone — but she knew no one around here.’

They met in 2011 while walking their dogs. ‘We did discover that we’d have taken the same train to London,’ he says. How could he not have noticed Prue Leith on a train? Oh yes, she hadn’t discovered yellow then.

Prue tells me that knowing John had been in the fashion trade unnerved her. For their first date, she tried to dress ‘like the elegant Cotswolds lady I thought he wanted, in taupes and beiges’. He took her to a designer colleague who made her two suits — ‘one in yellow and one in red’.

‘I didn’t push her into colour. It only took a nudge,’ he says. He’s still nudging. Just yesterday, Prue says, another pair of epic earrings arrived. Yellow, with fabric bits. ‘Like muffs. I said: ‘Too big?’ He said: ‘Oh no.’ ‘

By now, Prue has risen from the kitchen table to go and have her photo done. John watches her, dazzled. ‘I love her in big earrings. She has big ears, quite apart from anything else. Ears like an elephant. But she has no idea how attractive she is.’

The irony is that the woman who didn’t think she was brave enough for scarlet specs now has her own spectacles range. Ditto a clothing and jewellery range. ‘She doesn’t even need the specs now,’ John guffaws. ‘She had her cataracts done and they corrected her vision. The lenses are just glass.’

The name Prudence never quite fitted Prue Leith. Indeed, a romp through her autobiography reveals that this is a woman who once drugged her first husband. She slipped Valium into Rayne’s drink on a flight, because he had a history of causing scenes with flight attendants.

‘It was only once,’ she admits. She also popped a Valium when she had to serve the Queen tea. ‘I didn’t put it in the Queen’s tea. It was for me,’ she says, for the avoidance of doubt.

John says he read her life story, agog, particularly at her candour over matters sexual. ‘I got to chapter three and thought: ‘Oh I’m the first.’ Then I got to chapter nine and I thought: ‘F***! There is a long queue’.’

He suspected, though, that the older Prue had let the fun fade. ‘She was all about work,’ he says.

Early in their relationship, she had to go to Brazil for work. She asked if he wanted to come, too. Three days, all expenses paid. He said no.

‘I said if I was going to Brazil I wanted to spend three weeks there, not fly in, wave her off to work, and head to the airport again. So, that’s what we did. We hired a car, took off for three weeks. We stayed in a brothel one night.’ Pardon? I tell him: ‘I can’t imagine Prue in a brothel’. He says: ‘Oh, I can’.

By now we are eating soup (‘has everyone been fed?’ Prue yells across the kitchen) but appear to be on to the topic of sex.

‘Prue is a good advocate for geriatric sex,’ John continues. John! ‘Oh Prue won’t mind,’ he says. ‘It’s one of those things that people don’t talk enough about. Some of our friends have good marriages, but there is no sex. Some of them haven’t had sex for 30 years, which is sad.’

When I check Prue doesn’t mind being hailed a poster girl for geriatric sex, she shoots John a look, but shrugs. ‘As long as you don’t ask how many times we do it.’

Is this a good point to ask for energy tips? At 84 tomorrow, Prue is still working flat out. Turns out there is a secret. ‘A patch on my bum,’ she says, revealing she is still on the HRT that was first prescribed in her late 40s.

This flies in the face of medical advice, which is that HRT should not be seen as a long-term option for women. ‘They keep stressing the increased risk of breast cancer, but what about the things the patches protect you against — like osteoporosis?’ she says.

‘Each new doctor I see tries to stop the patches but, no thank you. I have to say I feel very sorry for women who are tired and miserable. That isn’t just a state of mind thing. It’s a physical thing.’

What of the recipe for longevity in a marriage? That’s a trickier one. Prue cites one of the best marriages she has witnessed to be that of her younger brother, Jamie, to the royal writer Penny Junor.

They were chalk and cheese (‘he was a carnivore who loved his barbecues, she is a vegan’), but were ‘perfect’ together. Jamie died from prostate cancer last year, after more than 50 years of marriage, leaving the entire family heartbroken.

‘It’s such a cliché, but I think what makes a good marriage is when your partner is your best friend,’ says Prue. ‘So many people are in slightly empty marriages. They get on perfectly well, but they wouldn’t choose their partner as their best friend.’

And is John your best friend? ‘Oh absolutely. Sometimes I think he’s my worst enemy, but mostly he’s my best friend.’

Before I leave, John shows me the coat of arms Prue had made after she received her damehood. Everyone who gets an honour is invited to have one. When she went to have it done, the people at the College of Arms asked if she had a motto she lived by.

‘Prue suggested ‘Just F***ing Do It’,’ laughs John. ‘There was a silence, before someone said, deadpan: ‘Oh I think Nike already have a version of that.’ So we had another think.’

Together they came up with the phrase ‘Nothing in moderation’, which does seem to sum up every aspect of Prue Leith’s life, show-stopper spouse included.

Prue Leith’s Cotswold Kitchen starts at 11.40am on Saturday, February 24 on ITV1 and ITVX.

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