Great British Bake Off's Prue Leith opens up about 'terrifying' fear and admits 'I'm very frightened'

Wales Online

28-04-2025

Great British Bake Off's Prue Leith opens up about 'terrifying' fear and admits 'I'm very frightened'
Great British Bake Off judge Prue Leith opened up about her childhood in South Africa and one thing she found particularly scary living in Western Cape
Prue Leith has opened up about something that 'terrifies' her
(Image: ITV )
Dame Prue Leith has shared that she's "very frightened" of the sea, citing a "terrifying experience" in her youth as the cause.
The Great British Bake Off judge grew up in Cape Town, Western Cape in South Africa. She says it was at university that she developed a fear of the sea.
‌
Prue made the revelation while discussing a time she found herself driving along a 22-mile stretch of beach in Western Australia. Speaking on the Travel Diaries podcast, Prue explained she "liked" driving along the beach due to her fear of the water.
Article continues below
Prue, 85, said: "I'm very frightened of the sea. In the Cape the sea is really rough and I can remember in the sea when I was a university student, you try and bodysurf and if you get tumbled by the sea, you just get your head banged on the floor, on sand, which is hard and compact underneath the water.
"You're just tossed over and over again, you can't breathe and your head is getting banged. It's terrifying, but in Western Australia, the waves aren't really big and it's very shallow."
Prue Leith grew up in Cape Town
(Image: PA )
‌
After leaving South Africa, Prue moved to Paris upon completing her education, initially working as an au pair before kindling her passion for cooking—a journey she revisited while speaking on Desert Island Discs, reminiscing about her time in France flitting between various patisseries for their specialty baked goods, reports Gloucestershire Live.
She remarked: "Food was just taken seriously, and it was like the scales falling from my eyes: 'What am I doing? Thinking I can be an actress or an artist or academic or... What I need to be is a cook.'".
In her twenties, Prue moved to a flat in London and attended a Cordon Bleu cookery course. It was after that she began her high-end catering company, based from her fourth-floor bedsit.
‌
Speaking to the BBC, Prue explained: "On the landing where the bathroom was, I'd wash the lettuces in the bath and I'd keep the lobsters there, because they couldn't climb out. Then when I had done a tray of beautiful petit-fours or little sandwiches or canapes for a cocktail party I'd line them all up on the top of my bed."
Prue joined Bake Off in 2017
(Image: Channel 4/Love Productions/Mark Bourdillon )
The star said she would deliver food in an Isetta three-wheel car or on the tube. She once recalled leaving a basket of lobsters on the Piccadilly line.
‌
In 1975, Prue established Leith's School of Food and Wine, which became renowned for training professional chefs and some of the best cooks in the industry. Not long after building this successful venture, she sold it and opened another cookery school in South Africa.
Prue was a judge on The Great British Menu between 2005 and 2016. But she left the show to replace Mary Berry as Paul Hollywood's fellow Bake Off judge.
However, more recently, Prue decided to take a step back from the celebrity version of Bake Off, highlighting the intense filming schedule: "These things are filmed back-to-back all the way through summer from April to August so you don't get any time off.
Article continues below
"I'm getting quite old and there's places I want to see. So I'm not doing this year's."