Prue Leith: “You can’t have it all!” How to ask for help with work and family

0:00Hello and a massive welcome to Happy Place with me Fern Cotton. This is the show that gives you the confidence to live life on your own terms. Today, I'm chatting to Dame Prue-Leath. I mean, talk about chutzpah. I had never worked in a restaurant, but I opened one. I'd never taught anybody to cook, but I opened a cookery school. Lack of knowledge has never seemed to have got in my way. I said, well, I'll learn as I go, you know. I would not have been a good full-time mother. I would have found the company of young children all the time boring. Oh my God, bloody how. How are we in September? What is going on?

0:41At the start of the summer holidays, I felt like I was at the foot of a mountain. Like, how am I going to get through it? The juggle of kids and work. And somehow we're back to school. We're like, are we hurtling towards Christmas? Am I saying that? I think I am. I'm a Virgo. My birthday is the 3rd of September. So I love this time of year. I want to go to a stationery shop and buy a new pencil case, even though I'm not going to school, and rulers and stationery, and I want everything neat and organised, and I want to get into a little routine. This feels to me like the new year, September. I bloody love it.

1:18I'm having a spring clean in September. I'm getting all the stationery. I'm getting my shit together, guys. That's where I'm at. You might not feel as motivated, but this is Virgo season. This is what Virgos do in September. Also can I just say if you came to our Tatton Park Happy Place Festival thank you from the bottom of my heart. I can't believe that we've done it again. Two festivals this summer. So grateful to every single one of you who turned up. It was just it's a beautiful thing. It's something I look forward to so massively every year in the calendar. It's a big part of our whole Happy Place calendar and don't you worry we're already working on next year so more to come on that.

1:59Now, the most important thing about September, it's not my birthday, it's not being a Virgo and getting all your stationery, it's actually the fact that every Tuesday night I get to sit down and watch the Great British Bake Off. I am absolutely thrilled that it's back. Me and my kids love it. This to me is like event TV where me and both my children, Rex and Honey will actually sit and watch the whole show together. I love it. Commenting on it, getting wrapped up in the drama. Who's got a soggy bottom? I literally can't get enough. It's like one of my favourite TV shows and I've watched every episode of I think every season since it started over the moon.

2:41So I was beyond excited to get to hang out with the one and only Dame Prue Leith. Not only has she got the most incredible collection of colourful accessories more than any human on the planet. But she's also got the knowledge, the stories. She's so lovely and generous with her comments to all of the bakers. She works so well with bold blue-eyed Paul. You've got Alison and Noel there. It's just such a great team and I love the show and I was so thrilled to have Pril and Happy Place. We natted about so much good stuff. The behind the scenes of Bake Off, which I was very intrigued in. By the way, you'll get to hear what Paul Hollywood gets up to in the breaks.

3:20You're not going to believe it. We're going to talk about growing up in South Africa, finding love again after being widowed and also about imposter syndrome, which is such a good. I feel like so bored even saying imposter syndrome. We all talk about it so much. But Prue has got an entirely different take on it, which I absolutely love. also we've never talked about this on happy place before we talk about assisted dying and you'll find out why and more about that a little bit later i really hope you love this one the market's uncertain revenues tied and hiring on hold that's why results driven companies are using upwork to keep work moving go to upwork.com today and start hiring proven freelance talent fast.

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6:12Right, let's crack on. Here's the show.

6:35Prue, it's so lovely to have you on Happy Place. I'm so excited to chat to you today. Well, I'm rather excited to meet you because we never have. We've never met. How have we avoided each other all this time? I know, it's extraordinary. It is. Considering me and my children and my stepkids from back in the day are huge Bake Off fans, we do not miss an episode. Our whole... Oh, well, that's good. Yeah, the whole autumn sort of revolves around watching Bake Off. it's well it's about to start again it's about to start again and we're so excited I mean it is a cultural moment each year that it comes on the tv and I'm imagining it must feel quite wonderful to be part of something that captures the nation like that it is it is lovely and I must say it astonishes me at how what a range of people watch it you know you I meet really old men who love it and tiny children who you'd think, you know, they're still watching CBeebies or something.

7:34And they love it. It's just a perfect combination of, you know, me and my daughter, for instance, love the actual baking part of it. We both love baking cakes. I was going to try and bake something today, but I'm having my kitchen decorated. So I've got no access to my kitchen, which is bloody annoying. But we love it. And my son, who's on the cusp of the teen years, who I could easily lose to YouTube or gaming or whatever. He loves the drama of it and the characters. You always get great characters on the show. It's amazing. That's what I love about it is the bakers. I mean, the bakers make the show because they are – I don't know whether it is that bakers as a group are particularly nice people.

8:12I've always thought fishmongers are nicer than butchers. I don't know why, but in my experience, it's pretty old. They are. And maybe bakers are just nice people. I don't know, but we always seem to get a bunch of people who are delightful, very different, come from every walk of life. And they are, they're just, you're sorry to see everyone go. Yeah, I bet. I know because you build up a rapport with them and a little relationship and then they're out. They're booted out. I know, it's horrible. It is. There's always tears. It's really sad. I mean, I know you can't say too much about this series.

8:47It's all tightly under wraps. But the thing I need to know is when they're doing the big bakes, they're doing the big show piece at the end, you and Paul will go off and have your time out. What are you guys up to? Well, you know, the best thing about Bake Off from my point of view, apart from the fact that I love the show anyway, is that I have so much time off. I mean, if you think about it, sometimes the showstopper can take five hours. The morning bake for the signature or the afternoon technical, they can be two hours or two and a half hours. So in my bake-off time, and that's nine years now, I've done nine years.

9:25In those nine years, I've written two novels, three cookbooks, an autobiography and another memoir. I mean, so you're not chilling out. You're not chatting to Paul Hollywood about your holidays. No, no. You're using it to work. He's too busy watching racing. Is that what he's doing? No, I think he's probably, I don't know what he's doing. Recently he's been studying for his helicopter pilot license. Oh, really? And that's a lot of academic work. You have to be so clever. Would you let him take you up in his chopper? I don't go in his Lamborghini because he drives it too fast for me. I do go in his Rolls Royce, which I love.

10:07Delightful. I feel like a proper day. Yeah, I love that. And he drives it very slowly. So that's okay. Well, you have to because you don't want to crash into anything. Bollards, other cars and a roller. No way. So he probably thinks about cars. But he's a very interesting fellow, Paul. I'm so lucky because, you know, to work for somebody for nine years and still like him is great. It's like going on holiday with someone. You know, you really do test whether you get on or not. And you do, which is great. As you said, you're using even your moments off during the filming of a show to do stuff. You've always been incredibly busy.

10:47You can talk, Fern. I know, but you're doing this also in the States. You've got this double life of doing the same show over in the States, which is a huge big deal over there as well. Do you like to constantly be challenged or busy? I like to be busy. I really do. And in fact, if I've had a whole run of being really, really busy and I finally and I'm working towards some time off, those first few days of being off, I'm absolutely disconnected. I'm actually uneasy because I'm used to being on it all the time and busy, busy, busy. But then I get into it and think this is heaven. Lovely. And actually, I've had a few much easier weeks since we stopped filming Bake Off.

11:34And it's been great. We've had a bit of holiday and we're going to go to Ibiza next week for holiday. I've just been. Yeah. Right. Love it there. What do you do in Ibiza? Have you not? I've never been. Oh, I'm going to give you some good restaurants. All right. Good. And I hope that they're okay because otherwise that's going to be embarrassing giving you tip-offs for shit restaurants. I'll tell you what, I'm so greedy. They'll be lovely. No, I've got two excellent restaurants that I'll write down for you. Okay. Good. Because I heard you on Chris Evans' radio show a while back saying that actually time off has felt more important than ever.

12:04Yeah. The age you're at now, the stage you're at in life, you want to travel, you want to see the world, you want to do things. I do, which is why I gave up Celebrity Break Off, because I just suddenly realised that I was working the whole summer. Although I was enjoying it, I just, you know, we hadn't had a summer holiday for eight years. Really? And John and I have only been married 13 years or 14 years or something. So it seemed a bit mean to say we'll never have a summer holiday. We'd obviously had winter holidays, but we had never had a summer holiday. And so I went off to Baker's Love Productions and said, I think it's time I stopped because I need to have some summer off.

12:48And they said, well, you don't have to stop altogether. Don't exaggerate. You just want a holiday. Why don't you just drop one? Because I was doing American, British and celebrity. Yeah, it's a lot. And at one point, junior as well. And do you find it hard to turn down things or say no to things? If I like the idea of them, I always find it hard. But, well, you know, it's easy to turn down stuff you don't want to do anyway. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But when you love it, it is hard. And I mean, also, if you like being busy, I like being busy. I'm no good if I haven't got a project, something I'm working on.

13:26I want to feel excited when I get out of bed that there's something ahead that I'm not quite sure about. or there's just natural excitement. It'll be interesting, exactly. I don't know quite what to do when I'm idle. I do find that quite uncomfortable. Where do you think that drive comes from? Because not everybody's built like that. You know, I know people, great friends of mine, and there's no judgment cast saying this. They really like chilling out and, you know, having free time to do nothing. Paul's like that. Paul only does bake-off because he really enjoys his leisure time. He loves his cars.

14:02He loves his motorbikes. He's learning to drive a helicopter. And he has good friends. And he's always saying to me, why don't you just enjoy your life? Stop doing all this stuff. And that is how I enjoy my life. So we are very different from that point of view. But, no, I do love it. I'm like you. I have to have something and I like new things that I've never done before. That's what I'm always tempted to do something when it's new. Yeah, it's interesting. I think you learn so much about yourself and uncover capabilities you didn't know you had. It's so interesting. Is that something that was born in childhood, would you say, from your parents?

14:47I think it was probably certainly not my father who was definitely in the preferred relaxing more than work. He was very good at it He was the director of a huge company And he worked extremely hard But he used to talk about As soon as he could retire He and my mother would go off and live in Portofino By the sea However he died when he was 54 So he never managed the Portofino dream But my mum Who was an actress And a theatre producer And had a theatre company this is all in South Africa she was more like me she was terrifically energetic and really good at what she did she was campaigning against apartheid she ran all sorts of theatrical things she managed to get the British Writers Union to drop their ban on books going to South Africa because she came to England just to tell them burning the books is not the way to change minds you need to plays to get on the stage that talk about fairness and race and and you need not to cut down the one you know the thing that can help you and so she persuaded them so she was quite a campaigner and and and great very good actress it's interesting when you look at that kind of nature nurture aspect of life I certainly think about it as a mother myself you know how much are our kids by osmosis sort of picking up and seeing of you know work ethic or drive and or how much you just I don't know you turn up on planet earth with that instilled I don't know that's it's very interesting I've got two children one is adopted and Cambodian and my daughter and she is a constant delight and of course I'm thinking all the time well I've got some unknown Cambodian couple to thank for that I mean she's musical for a strata I can't I am totally totally not musical I mean I I can't keep a tune I I'm tone deaf you know I'm hopeless but she is really musical so that's that's amazing now she is energetic and on it and does lots of things and now if she picked up any of that I mean I've had her since she was a baby so she could have picked up some of that from me.

17:17On the other hand, it could all be a hope. I have no idea. My son is a politician and he works extremely hard, mostly in his head. He's very intellectual. He writes and he's a politician. I mean, he doesn't mind if anything that he would regard as trivial, he doesn't bother with. So if I go to their house, I drive them mad because I start doing the washing up and clearing up and rearranging the fridge and throwing away all the rubbish because they don't do that it's not important no but i mean i have to do it same i love a good clear out i love a clean surface it's my favorite i know i'm completely i just my my husband sometimes says he said if i stand still for five minutes you'll put me in a black bag and put me out in the bin.

18:14And he accuses me of having a sterile, not sterile, but that I'd like a sterile house. Nice, same. Which I resent. But he's a complete, if he opens a packet, he simply opens it, takes out what he wants, leaves the knife that is pinched from my knife rack, He'll leave the knife next to it that he's opened it with. He'll leave all the wrapping papers there. He'll take what it was out and use it. Or if it doesn't interest him, he'll just plonk it down and leave it. No, that is unacceptable. It's totally unacceptable, but I have to accept it. No, it's the worst. I will often surface clean under someone's plate when they're still eating.

19:00I just want the surface shining. I should be married to you. We should be, we'd be a perfect compatible couple. I would often like a surface cleaner bottle just strapped to my arm so I don't have to keep picking it up because that's just, this is the noise of me in the kitchen. That's, you know, I'm in the house because that's the noise. I'm constantly cleaning surfaces. It's a dream. My husband once said, if you go before me, I'm going to bury you with a J cloth. Same. Snap. I love it. You met your husband, as you say, you've only been married 13 years, but you met him later in life. I mean, I think this is a really interesting subject because I've got a lot of friends now who are either going through divorce or haven't met the person that they're, you know, hoping to spend their life with.

19:44In our mid 40s, panicking, panicking they're not going to meet someone. What would you say? When I was 70. Yes. Amazing. And in fact, when I met John, I had been a widow for eight years. And I hadn't ever felt any pangs or looked at somebody and thought, oh, I fancy you or anything. I just sort of thought that part of me had disappeared with my husband. It was my first husband too. I adored because we had a very happy marriage. And so, you know, I was content really. And I got to that stage when you think that actually living alone is great. You suddenly realize that you can have, that there are no crumbs in the bed.

20:29That's a great relief. That you don't have to check in and say, I'm running late or I missed the train. You don't have to produce meals on time. Your children have left home. You're not responsible to anybody. and you can stay up all night reading a book if you want to and you don't have to get up in the morning if you don't have to. It's just so lovely to have that freedom. So I thought that was it, lovely. That suited me fine. It took me a little while to get used to actual widowhood but then I had friends and I was fine. And then I met John and I thought, this is very odd. I actually am interested in that chap.

21:11and I realized that he is much younger than me. I think he was 64 when I was 70 and I was giving a talk in a church which was being used as a venue for a literary festival and I knew he was going to turn up to it so I thought well I better put my cards on the table right now because I don't want to get into any kind of relationship with this guy if he's going to walk away the minute he discovers that I'm much older than him. So I worked into my talk the fact that I was 70. I said, you know, I said, well, he'll be out of the door before the end of this. But he wasn't. So he stuck around. So he's still there.

21:58That's amazing. That's so great. But it's so, you know, we had Zandra Rhodes on the podcast maybe last year. And we had this chat, you know, she met the love of her life. I think she was in her 60s. And there is this cultural pressure that you're meant to have met the person, you know, your 20s or your 30s. And then if you don't, that's it. And there's, especially for women, this fear that you're not going to meet a life partner. And it's absolute bollocks. It's absolute bollocks. Of course, it's not guaranteed, but it's not guaranteed at the age of 20 or 30 or 40. but I do have a lot of single women friends who over the years have said to me hasn't John got a brother why can't you find me a John but actually if I look at them most of them have ended up with somebody they truly adore it may have taken a long time but they have yeah absolutely Yeah.

23:01It's beautiful. And he's got quite the fan base now, hasn't he, from appearing on your TV show? I'm slightly regretting this, I tell you. He's got quite the fan base. Well, he certainly has. What happened was because we decided I wanted to do a... ITV asked me if I'd do a Saturday morning chop and chat show. And so I said, yes, I would. but I wanted it to be in my house because I really, you know, the only thing that I find difficult with Bake Off is that I generally have to get up at half as four or five in the morning to get there or stay the night before. So it's a lot of very early mornings and late nights.

23:44So I thought, well, that's great. I'll just come downstairs when they're ready. So we were planning it and they were very good. they said they agreed that I didn't have to just cook, that I could have people like you. You think you'll get away, but you won't. I'll come on your show. Oh, my God. Good. Well, that wasn't a struggle then. No, no. I'm there. Get me to the Cotswolds. Lovely. Well, so I've had really interesting people come, and that's fun. And we've broadened the whole thing from cooking to it's about the Cotswolds and farming and And what I call, there's a strand in it, which is food heroes, which is every sort of cranky, quirky farming.

24:35We went to visit a llama farm the other day to find out how you make money out of llamas. It's wool, basically. But that was fun. And then John. So then I thought, we need John in this because he can go and do a lot of the outdoor stuff. because he's very good on machines. He can go to the llama farm. And he loves anything that makes a noise. And so I thought, but mainly I thought it would be nice to have him in the program because if we're filming for three weeks and you know what that means in the way of lights and cameras and cables everywhere, you can't get to your own fridge or your drawer because there's all this clobber in the way.

25:20and I thought he'd get really irritated if this was going on for three weeks. So I talked him into it. I mean, he's always up for anything. So he said, sure, OK, I'll do it. Well, he has turned out to be so popular that the other day we were in the co-op and the woman in the checkout recognised John and she said, oh, she said, you're the man off the telly. She said, you're the Cotswold Kitchen. You're John Playfair. she says oh I love you I love you she says can I have a selfie and she's right in her face and a great deal of I love you and I am there packing the bags I'm putting the yeah and I thought this was a mistake we've created a monster here this is so good oh but it's so lovely and I love that you've made it work for you it's in your house and also that gives it such a lovely relaxed feel you feel like you're getting a peek inside your life and your relationship

26:44Thank you. dot com. Post a job for free and get started today. If you're a smoker or vapor ready to make a change, you really only need one good reason. But with Zinn Nicotine Pouches, you'll discover many good reasons. Zinn is America's number one nicotine pouch brand. Plus, Zinn offers a robust rewards program. There are lots of options when it comes to nicotine satisfaction, but there's only one Zinn. Check out Zinn.com slash find to find Zinn at a store near you. Warning. This product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. Dr. India Woods here. As a veterinarian, I demand a lot of my scrubs on the job.

27:27That's why I show up in FIGS. FIGS are made for the sometimes crazy situations I find myself in. It doesn't matter if I have to squat, sit, bend, or even chase after one of my patients. FIGS moves with me and keeps me comfortable in the highest pressure situations. FIGS gives me one less thing to worry about. Get 15 % off your first order by visiting wearfigs.com and use code FIGSRX at checkout. That's wearfigs.com, code FIGSRX. Going back to your childhood in South Africa, where did that first love of cooking come from? Was it again people cooking around you? No, it wasn't South Africa at all.

28:04I mean, my mother wasn't interested in cooking. She couldn't cook at all. In fact, I think she's probably the worst cook I've ever had. We all dreaded going to my mother's lunch if she was cooking because she's a dreadful cook. But that was because I came from this very well-off South African white privileged family and we had a cook and he was brilliant. So we ate fantastically well at home, but no thanks to my mother. All thanks to Charlie, who was a great cook. I think as a family, we talked about food quite a bit. I remember my mother waxing lyrical about the joys of snails in garlic, which she'd first eaten in France.

28:50That's one thing I could never eat. Are you sure? It's the texture. How do you know? The texture. I've never eaten an oyster, a mussel. I feel like I'm... Absolutely, I know. The snails. Picking them out with a little stick? Absolutely not. I have to tell you the texture is the best thing about them Anyway And the next best thing is that they taste garlic Garlic I'm here for It's just this gooey Is it rubbery This is chewy They're lovely I'm unconvinced But anyway my mother was describing to me How she loved snails and garlic And in posh restaurants You're given a little tool To pick up the snail with Like tongs and they clasp but they're a bit like a cross between a nutcracker and they hold the snail so you don't get your hands all buttery and then you have a toothpick or a little pick and she was getting so excited about the machinery and the ceremony and the flavour and actually talking to you, I'm now dribbling thinking about it yum yum yum so we were always greedy my treat as a child was my dad would take me out by myself for a treat without my brothers and that was he would do it for my brothers as well but they would go and do what they wanted to do but he and I always went off to a restaurant and had you know now it seems sort of funny because it was things like chicken in the basket and sort of what wouldn't be amazing today but what was for a child.

30:32It's terrific. So I think I was always interested in food and I loved food, but I'd never thought of it from a cook's point of view. I just thought of eating it. I liked eating it. And then when I was in Paris at university, I suddenly realized that really grown up intelligent people liked food. They all talked about food all the time. They all cared about food. If you were in a pub or in a brasserie and you were standing at a counter, you could have a captain of industry, some posh guy, standing next to the metro worker. And they would both agree on where the best way that frites should be made, how many times they should be fried, and where the best steak came from, and who were the best growers of something.

31:34And I thought, this is interesting that people are interested in food. And then, of course, you can't actually live in France for two years and not get interested in food. No, of course not. So in the end, at that point, I said to my dad, could I do a Cordeau de la Côte? And it's a year long. And he said, I'll pay for three months because he said, so far you have, he said, because you'll have left before three months is up anyway. Because he said, you left drama school, you left art school, you left architecture school, you left the university where you were doing a BA. All of them in about three months.

32:20So what makes you think you're going to stick to this one? And I said, I really, really wanted to. Anyway, so I did the three month course and it did stick it. It was lovely. Did it feel different to the other courses that you took? Like this is my thing. Yes, no, what happened? First of all, I went to drama school because I thought my mum's an actress. I love the theatre. We went to the theatre a lot as kids. So I thought, well, that's what I'll do. I'll do what my mum does. but I wasn't any good at it and so I didn't really enjoy and I found I didn't really enjoy it I liked the plays and I liked the rehearsals but I just didn't actually like the acting and so then I thought oh I'd rather be a set designer then I can still be in the theatre but I can do because I'd been good at art at school so I thought I'd be there so I swapped to art school because in those days once you were in the university you could swap from one course to another without too much difficulty and then I went to the art school and the the head of the art department stood behind me in a life class and he um he said what are you doing in my he was Norwegian or something he said what are you doing in my art school and I said well I'm trying to learn to draw so he said I I would give it up now if I was you.

33:45You have no talent. That's encouraging. Nowadays, of course, you're never allowed to be. You have to be encouraging. Absolutely. Which I think is a mistake, really. I mean, you know, he saved me two years. I would have gone on. I would have happily gone on for two years. I was having a lovely time. I was spending most of the time on the beach. Heaven. You know, Cape Town is a great place to be at university. Oh, my God, I bet. So I would be happily stayed there for two years doing not succeeding. And then I'd had this much the same experience at architecture school where I couldn't do the maths.

34:23And in those days you had to be able to do the maths. Now you don't. You have to be able to work a computer. Yeah. Get out AI to do it. Yeah. Exactly. Probably. Yes. And so then I went. Then I went. I had gone to do a BA. and I was doing a BA in French and logic and I couldn't handle the logic but I liked the French. So then I said to my long-suffering dad, you know, I'd much rather learn French from the French. I'm learning French from an Afrikaans teacher and I'm sure French is very good but it doesn't sound right. Anyway, so he was very tolerant. I mean, I think one of the things I took from my dad was that I don't think you should expect children to know what they want to do when they just left school.

35:16Why would they? It's crazy. Why would they? I only worked it out about five years ago. Exactly. And I keep on reworking it out. Yes. I also want to do that and I want to do that. Absolutely. and I mean you and I are lucky now because we're likely to get the chances to do what we want to do at least have a crack at it yeah but when you're 19 and people keep saying to you you've got to make up your mind what do you want to do how do they know if they want to be a lawyer they've never worked in a lawyer's office you need to go and try it all out you need to experiment anyway so he was pretty tall and he just basically waited for us all to grow up that's amazing he gave you the time Yeah.

35:59So having done that cord and blur course and having that feeling of this is this is my thing. I think I really want to do this lighting you up. How do you go from that to then having an incredibly successful restaurant that everyone's talking about? You know, you've built up a clientele that come back and back because they know what they're going to get and they know they love it. There'll be loads of people that will have done that course that didn't go on to have that sort of success. What set you apart? Well, I started with the catering because I didn't have any money. There was no point in thinking about a restaurant.

36:34Of course, I dreamt of a restaurant because all cooks do. I mean, if you're a cook, you want to cook for other people. I think all cooks want to see people having. What they don't realize is actually if you're the chef, you never do see the other people. You never see the people eating. But you want to cook for other people. So I basically, when I left the Cordon Bleu, I had already begun to get a few customers when I was a student who offered me, you know, other caterers, grown-up caterers, would ask me to come and do a day's work for them occasionally because they used to apply to the school and say, have you got any students who want to earn a bit?

37:14So I started like that and then I started having my own customers and then I had a bedsitter in the house court. I started my catering company from there. And I had the biggest luck because it was up on the fourth floor of basically a rooming house. And the landlady had no sense of smell. So she never came up to the fourth floor. She had no idea that I probably had live lobsters in the bath or lettuces. That's amazing. And if she'd come in to my room, she'd probably find me making smoked salmon sandwiches on the dressing table or something. But that's how I started. And then I got a client, some young lads in the city who were sugar brokers or something.

38:12but they were quite young and there were about five or six of them. And they wanted to have one smart lunch a week where they could woo clients, you know, sort of directors' dining rooms. So they turned one of their offices every Friday into a director's dining room and they'd ask people there. And after about, I'd been doing Friday lunches for them for, I don't know, many months, perhaps five or six months. And they asked me if I'd like to join them. for lunch they were just saying thank you for feeding us so well so I was sitting there I was quite nervous and the senior partner who was probably all of 30 but he seemed very grown up to me yeah he started to look in the salad look at the salad with very sort of concentrated intent and I thought oh he doesn't he'd never he's never seen a designer salad before he doesn't know what arugula is or lamb's lettuce or cos or whatever.

39:14And I was feeling quite smug. And then he put his hand into the salad bowl and he pulled out quite slowly a piece of string. And then he pulled a little bit further and the piece of string turned into a chain and then out popped my bath plug.

39:33And I remember saying, I said, well, at least it proves I washed the lettuce. That is brilliant. And they all laughed. And they were fine about it. They were fine about it. But, you know, sometimes... That's so great. Sometimes I think my whole catering... To answer your question, basically I started with catering, going around people's houses doing dinner parties, on the tube mostly. and then I got a little ran. I mean you set quite the scene. We were talking even off Mike earlier about I've got Lulu coming on the podcast soon and she was someone that would frequent your restaurant. She was there in the mix.

40:19It was a cultural moment of having all the rock stars there, the actors. You know, restaurants were the scene. I mean they still are the scene but they were really the epicentre of cool back then where people would congregate and eat and stay up very, very late at night. I mean imagine that you saw all sorts. Well, and I think I was very lucky because I had never, I mean, talk about chutzpah. I had never worked in a restaurant, but I opened one. I'd never taught anybody to cook, but I opened a cookery school. Lack of knowledge has never seemed to have got in my way. I said, well, I'll learn as I go, you know.

40:58but that restaurant was very different as a result because I wasn't influenced by anybody else so I decided what I like when I go to restaurants I'd like to know what I'm going to pay I don't want to have a menu with different prices so people are thinking do you think my host can afford the very expensive thing I'd better have the cheap one I just thought we'll have one price for four courses four course meal one price You can eat it all or you can eat one course, but you have to pay the same. And lots of people said to me, that's a crazy thing to do because nobody will come. People loved it because they just knew what they were getting.

41:40It also, you bought. I always felt that what you're doing when you go to a really good restaurant, it's not the food you're paying for. You're paying for being there, for sitting in that chair, in that room, in that company, having, it's the experience. Yeah. Not the fact of what you're eating. So if you booked in my restaurant, we never said you've got to be out by 9 o 'clock. You had the place for the evening. So it was quite expensive, but you had the whole evening and you could eat what you like. So all of that was different. And then I didn't understand why restaurants' menus should be written in French.

42:19In those days, all posh restaurants had French menus. Ridiculous. My kitchen staff didn't talk French, so why on earth were we expecting the customers to talk French? We had, I thought, if you're going to sit there all evening, you need a really comfortable chair. So you don't want one of those chairs that scrapes and makes a terrible noise on the hard floor. So we bought the best office chairs with five casters so they could swivel very easily and quietly. They were easy to get in and easy to get out. and people absolutely loved them. We had carpet on the ceiling so to dampen the sound. You know, it was just that we had things that I thought would be a good idea without any knowledge of how restaurants worked.

43:08Yeah. And they worked. It's kind of flipping. You know, we hear a lot in this day and age, I think, especially in sort of female-based conversations around imposter syndrome, like I shouldn't do this thing or I don't feel like I belong here. But actually, you flipped it on your head entirely to use that to your advantage of I'm not going to look at what everybody else is doing or worry about what I've done before. This is what I feel intuitively is going to work. Did you ever have any level of imposter syndrome? I mean, it's such a new term that gets battered about, but I don't know if it's hindering us more talking about it.

43:45I mean, I don't think anybody who is highly successful doesn't think, how did I get here? This is ridiculous. I don't deserve it. I think there's a bit of that. You must have that. Oh, my God, of course. Yeah. So if that's for imposter syndrome, certainly I do. And I put it down to amazing good luck. And the fact that I have a lot of energy, which is God given. It's not – I can't take any credit for the fact that I wake up in the morning and think, let's do it. I don't think you can blame people who are depressed and unhappy. It's not their fault. It's a disease. It's a real problem. But I've been so lucky in having the energy and the sort of general enthusiasm.

44:30I mean, I'm sure it, one of my children did once describe me as very tiring. You know, most mothers describe their children as tiring. Yeah, the other way around. She's so tiring. But I love hearing about that, that, you know, you've got an idea, you want to give something a go you bloody well do it. I think we so often stop ourselves from trying new things because we think I don't have the experience. I've never taught cookery before. I've never done whatever the thing is. We block ourselves from doing it and actually the only thing stopping you is yourself. You've got to give it a try. Also, if it's something like a business, I've only ever had one little rule for myself and that's hire people who are better than you.

45:22I mean, why surround yourself with people who know less than you do. And don't think you can do it all either. I'm the same. I'm like, I need all the people that are amazing because I can only do one thing. Well, exactly. And I'm still like that. I mean, Emma, who's my PA, I mean, I couldn't do any of the stuff she does. I mean, she's amazing. She's just like a little machine. And so calm and efficient and it's all just fantastic. I would be running around. I'd probably get it done, but it would not be smooth. And, you know, you don't have an accountant who can only add up as well as you can. That would be a disaster, wouldn't it?

46:03Correct. Yeah. So I do try to surround myself with better people than me. Would you say you're a workaholic? I suppose so. I mean, if a workaholic is somebody who really loves work and probably prefers it to most things. Yeah. But then I've made most things I like into my work. Yeah. So that makes work rather better. Yeah, if you enjoy it It's the best And what I I don't know I know you write novels too And by the way Much more successively than I do I don't know about that I know you've got bestseller Written over all your novels None of my I have never ever had A real bestseller I've had really good steady sellers But I've never had Some of them might have done alright Some not so much It's this, isn't it?

46:48You never know The ones you think you're going to do brilliantly don't And the ones you're not bothered about do great It's funny, isn't it? It's funny Yeah, I quite agree. But the thing that gives me the most satisfaction is writing. Yeah, it's heaven. It's just the best thing ever. The market's uncertain. Revenue's tied and hiring on hold. That's why results-driven companies are using Upwork to keep work moving. Go to Upwork.com today and start hiring proven freelance talent fast. No bulky overhead. No rigid long-term contracts. Just the right expert, right when you need them. Work smarter and faster with Upwork.

47:27Go to Upwork.com now and find your freelance expert. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com. Post a job for free and get started today. Hi, this is Knox from the Popcast with Knox and Jamie. And maybe like us at the Popcast, you also know people who have been smokers or vapors. And Zen is the one product it seems like everyone is talking about. Because there are many good reasons to make a change to Zen nicotine pouches. Reasons like Zen nicotine pouches are still America's number one choice for smoke-free, hands-free nicotine satisfaction. And you can choose between 10 varieties, each variety available in either 3 or 6 milligrams.

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48:43another conversation that again is very female-centric because this is the world that we live in is how we juggle motherhood family life home life and work you know the same doesn't equate in terms of men chatting about this at work you know they just go to work and that's still the world we live in today whereas you know most of my friends who have you know full-on careers or climbing a ladder at work are constantly tearing their hair out they feel like they're dropping balls left right and center that they're never quite doing the parenting or the work well enough I certainly feel like that constantly like I'm just scampering around trying my best to spin all of these plates and sometimes everything falls to shit and you just think what am I doing trying to do it all what what's been your take on that running businesses starting new projects and having a family?

49:34Well, I think, again, it comes to be, it's about timing, isn't it? I mean, if you're lucky enough to do well at something so you can afford the help, and really it boils down to getting the help, because it isn't possible to bring up two or three children and have a full-time job without help. And people should just stop feeling neurotic that they have to be with their children every minute of the day and that only mummy can do it. Other people can do it. The difficulty is if you can't afford that other person. And I've always been just simply lucky enough to earn the money fast enough to keep ahead because I didn't have my children until I was 34.

50:17So I had my business under my belt before I started breeding. And I think that if I had, I would never achieve what I have. If I'd met my husband and married him, my first husband, when I was 22 or 23 or something, I did meet him then, but I didn't marry him then. If we had married that young and I had had my children, I could not possibly have run the restaurant, opened the school, because all of that was in 10 years. Within 10 years, I had got the catering company really set up. By 1969 I opened the restaurant And the 70s was my most busy year Because then I opened the cookery school And everything was doing incredibly well And my children were born in 1974 So by the time I had my babies One baby and adopted the other one I could get first an au pair and then a nanny I mean there is this sort of toxic messaging that gets floated about that women can have it all in this day and age.

51:25That's the messaging and you can't. No, you can't have it all. And, I mean, you can have it all, but what you shouldn't want is to, I don't want to talk for anybody else because everybody's different, but I would not have been a good full-time mother. I would have found the company of young children all the time boring and tiring. Yeah. and I'd have got ratty and furious at all the time. Yeah. I think they need relief from their mother. Gotcha. And you need relief from them. Yeah. And if you can afford some help or childminder or some way, even if it's a question of sharing with friends, I know that my daughter wouldn't live without her friends because they dump their children on each other so that they can have a date night with their husbands and they can sometimes go away for a weekend.

52:21Yes, important. The children are old enough to just leave them. Yeah, I know. Or there's a granny. I mean, my son has three children. My son's mother-in-law is a brilliant mother-in-law. She is the absolute ideal granny. She does everything. She makes things with the children for fancy dresses. She cooks, she cleans, she takes the kids to the park. She just slots in all the time. And she doesn't have a salary. So that's brilliant. Yeah, exactly. It's great. How many people can have that? I mean, I think that Ginny, her name is Ginny. I think Ginny is a complete saint because I would never do that job.

53:07No, no. I mean, my mum, my mum's, you know, she'll turn up in a four inch wedge shoe. So she's not going to play football in the park with the kids. but she'll do the little fun bits here and there but I think you know it's a big ass to be that grandparent that is there helping dropping everything at all times and you're so right you know I think it's really refreshing hearing you say you know that you wouldn't have dealt well with being a full-time mum I feel the same I need external stimulation from work and and challenging myself in lots of ways and I'm not saying like you there's a wrong or a right but But it feels like there's less space to say that out loud.

53:47People, I think today, there is so much pressure on women that you should be enjoying every minute of parenting. And it's bloody hard. It's really hard. It's not all enjoyable. No, not at all. It's definitely not enjoyable. No, no, no. No, no. But, you know, I think, you know, there are mums who absolutely love every minute with their children. And that's fantastic. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. We're all different. But boy, hats off to them. I couldn't do that. It's full on. It's full on. Something you've been deeply passionate about that I've read a fair bit about over the years is to do with your brother who passed away of bone cancer.

54:32And he had a really slow and awful death. And you've been an advocate for assisted death, which is still unavailable in the UK. You've written letters to the government. You've campaigned. Do you feel like there's any progress with that? Oh, there is. It's now got through all its... The bill is called the... It's not called assisted dying, but that's basically what it is. The proposed legislation has now been through the three readings in the Commons and is set to start going through the House of Lords, which will be a more difficult struggle to get it through because the Lords are more nervous about the sister dying than the Commons.

55:26The country as a whole, about 80 % of the country, would like to have an assisted death if they could And would like to have the law changed And I think it got through the Commons, but quite narrowly Because interestingly, the House of Commons and the House of Lords, Parliament generally Is less representative of the people, which is interesting But anyway, they are, because they're more nervous about the idea They think that they've got sort of three main objections. One is that they're worried that people will be coerced by greedy relatives into taking death as a way out when they're just after their money.

56:10Or more, which I don't think is likely at all. There's been absolutely all the countries and there are lots of jurisdictions all over the place. About half the states in the United States, it's legal. It's legal in Canada. It's legal in the Netherlands. It's legal in all those low countries and Belgium and so on. It's legal in Australia, New Zealand and all over the place, about to be legal in France. and in none of those countries has there been any question, no hint that people have been, nobody's come up and said, oh, my mother was bullied into being euthanized by my wicked brother. No, it just hasn't happened.

57:00So I think that's scaremongering. and then there are other other objections are that we'll pass a law that says this is only for people who are terminally ill and then quite soon we'll start saying oh no could anorexic teenagers can do it too and or we ought to allow children to do it or we ought to allow mentally ill people to do it well I don't think that's likely either and no other jurisdiction has ever changed their or widened it or made it more available. Yeah. So that hasn't happened. So that's the sort of slippery slope argument. Oh, I forget what the other one is. But anyway, so far, we've managed to get it through the Commons, but not yet through the Lords.

57:54But I'm very worried about it because I think it would be such, you know, if we don't get it through this time, because it's come to the similar suggestions have come up as proposed legislation before now. But twice it's been kicked out by the Commons. This time is the first time it's got as far as the Lords, which always takes place after the Commons. And I think obviously if it's defeated again, it'll be another 10 years before it can come up. But it will come in the end because that's the way the world's going. Yeah, and I guess, you know, unless you've got that personal experience where you've seen someone die in that way, you're not going to feel it in that personal.

58:40We all have we have this complete vision of the perfect death, which we get from the movies that somebody is lying in a bed and they've got relatives each side hand. There's Mozart in the background and very soft lighting and it's all very peaceful and lovely. Well, that does occasionally happen, but it is very, very rare. A lot of people, I reckon about 7 ,000 people die in NHS hospitals. That's the worst place to be left is in a hospital because they're not allowed to assist you to die. If you're at home or in a hospice, there's a faint chance that a kind doctor might give you a bit more morphine.

59:21Not to kill you, but to relieve your pain. And that will be so much that actually you will get into a coma and drift off, which is what used to happen a lot but once Harold Shipman started murdering people I don't know if you remember but there was a terrific case where Shipman murdered lots of women he was a doctor then the law just got very tight about not allowing morphine in case it should kill you but I think ultimately Fern it comes down to such a simple thing two arguments. One I feel very strongly about. I think it's my body. It's the autonomy argument. Why can't I have a say in what happens?

1:00:09Why is somebody else making decisions about whether I live or die when I really want to die? And we're only talking about people who are in such agony that they are desperate to die and they're going to die anyway. They are terminally ill.

1:00:27They're They're much more basic. It's so crude that I feel I should almost not say it. But we would not let a dog die the way we insist humans die. Yeah. We wouldn't let a cat, a horse, you know. Yeah, yeah, I get it. I get it. It's very, very hard. You need a vet, not a doctor. That's what you need. Yeah. Don't go to the vets. Don't go to the vets for this. Well, you know, my husband always says to me, when I'm particularly doolally and I'm having old ladies, you know, I lose my place or I can't remember what I'm doing or I can't remember somebody's name. I call my son by my dog's name. I do that.

1:01:14My husband just says to me, vet. We're taking Prue to the vets, guys. Let's go. I read that you said you feel like you've lived a long life thus far because you are happy. What makes you happy? Well, I've thought quite a lot about this because I've just written a book, which is not out yet, but will be next year, called Being Old. And so I've had to think about it a lot. And I finally concluded that the reason that I'm so enjoying my life is that I'm really healthy and I eat well, I sleep well, and I love well. And if you eat, sleep, and love, and it's all satisfactory, why would you not be happy?

1:02:01Yes, the simple stuff. And how can you be happy if you don't sleep well and you don't eat well and you don't have somebody to love? or something to love. It doesn't have to be a person. It could be an obsession. Or a dog or a cat. Oh, my God, my cats give me so much love. I love them. Yeah, it's the simple stuff. It's always the simple stuff. It is the simple stuff. It's nothing more than that. And where would you say your happy place is? It could be a literal place or otherwise. Well, I have to say, and I'm sure everybody who asks says this, it's home. Yeah. And it's home for most people because it's where you're comfortable, what's familiar and with people you love.

1:02:43But my home particularly is wonderful because what happened when John and I finally were living together and our children had all left home, we realized that we were living in huge houses separately, seeing each other every day. Or he would come and stay with me for the night. but he still had his house and it sort of worked very well but I suddenly realized that the only way I'm going to be able to either I stay in this huge great beautiful house and spend all the rest all the money I've earned slowly leaking it away on the roof and the garden and the upkeep and all hardly see but we didn't get together because we both had so much stuff who's going to move half you know it would be such an awful business to perhaps move half of my stuff onto the skip to move his stuff in and half of his stuff onto the skip so in the end we said why don't we just sell both houses and and build a new one and i had at the time a house with a little farm attached and the farm had a little cottage.

1:04:05So what I did was I sold a big house, fortunately for lots of money because the Cotswolds... Booming. Booming, which meant that we could afford to build a new house on the footprint of the old farm cottage. We knocked it down and built a modern house. So we built that house together and we did it during COVID and it was the most wonderful time because construction was allowed so we could walk down every day because we were on our own property so we weren't breaking any laws and watch what was going on. And so instead of keening about the fact that I was losing my big house and where we lived for 45 years and my kids were brought up there and everything, instead of worrying about that, I was thinking ahead all the time.

1:04:55I was thinking about the new place. And it is the most lovely house and it works perfectly. and now I do my Cotswold kitchen in it. And John always has a project. He's a great one. He's always outside. He's always got some machine in his hand. And he started building metal sculptures, which is very artistic. Oh, wow. He was a fashion designer, women's fashion, and he had factories making women's fashion. So he was obviously artistic. Yeah. So he makes these great metal sculptures. And then he sort of tarted up one of our barns, you know, made it into really lovely. It's got a sort of greenhouse in the bottom of it and a potting shed and all that stuff, which I love.

1:05:49And then he turned a log cabin into a guest house. So he's always doing stuff. And he's just built a fruit cage. And his latest, and I hope his last project, because this is huge, is an enormous dove cut. Oh, wow. Huge thing. It's about 24 foot high. Anyway, yesterday we were in the village of Avery, you know, down near Salisbury. And he said, you're always complaining about that I'm building this ridiculously big dove cut. He said, it's only going to have 10 pairs of doves in it. You said that dove over there, medieval one That has a thousand doves Oh my god, no Don't get any ideas Don't get any ideas 20 doves is a perfect amount of doves I love it So we're going to have doves, which will be fun And then I hope you'll stop But you won't of course You'll think of something else Got to keep busy, got to keep creating It's gorgeous Well I for one am so excited for Bake Off to start Here's to sleeping well Eating well and loving well.

1:07:00Thank you, Fern. Thank you, Prue. Oh, Prue, I loved that. There were parts of that conversation where I completely forgot I was recording an episode of Happy Place and just felt like I was hanging out with someone incredibly interesting and just diving into all of these stories. I just felt like we were sort of sat in Prue's Cotswold kitchen having a chat, which hopefully, by the way, I will do in actual real life soon. Oh my God. Is that invite real? Am I going on her actual TV show, going to her house to hang out with her and John? Let's hope so. Can't wait. The Great British Bake Off starts Tuesday, the 2nd of September.

1:07:36Best birthday treat for me ever. Right, you gorgeous lot, back here next week with a completely brilliant guest recorded live at the Happy Place Festival in Tatton Park just this weekend gone. But in the meantime, a massive thanks again to Prue, to the producer Anushka Tate at Happy Place Studios, and to you, I love ya.

1:08:14so

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