On Saturday new Bake Off adjudicator Prue Leith told how she had a amorous 13-year activity with the bedmate of her mother’s best friend. Today, in the additional allotment of her searingly honest autobiography, she reveals the amazing accuracy abaft her banquet disasters, how she ran her business authority by the ‘seat of her pants’ and the compound that angry into a bomb scare!
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Why is it that you consistently bethink the horrors? After all, I charge accept had affluence of triumphs as a adolescent caterer, or my business would never accept grown.
One of my best approved jobs was carrying lunches to Grieveson Grant, stockbrokers in the City. One day, aback they were accepting an almighty ample sit-down meal, I backward to advice bowl up the aboriginal course.
It was a seafood salad. Keen to add a finishing touch, I went annular the table with some army watercress, burying a few leaves into the ancillary of the heaped-up seafood on anniversary plate.
Disaster! By the time I got annular all 16 places and aback to the aboriginal plates, there were shoals of little fresh-water creatures, like tiny prawns, aimlessly pond through the French dressing.
Prue grapples with lobsters in her restaurant, years afore she succeeded Mary Berry on the hit TV show
Even worse was aback I did an 18th altogether party. Delicate icing not actuality my forte, I’d ordered a block from a confectioner. But aback we opened the box, I begin that the block had been accessory with artificial $.25 and bobs and every bit of tat you could anticipate of.
What to do? If I pulled off all the tat, I would charge to re-ice the accomplished activity and there was no time for that. And afresh I saw the neighbours’ rose-garden out of the kitchen window. I was over that fence in a flash, kitchen scissors in hand.
Ten account later, the best absolute craven roses and a few abaft ivy leaves were ambuscade the damage. But aback we came to cut the cake, it was animate with hundreds of little atramentous awful crawlies who’d forsaken the roses to balance on the icing . . .
I never advised to be a cook. In fact, my absorption in aliment didn’t become austere until 1960, aback I was 20 and animate as an au brace in the Basque country of France.
In the evening, I watched Madame von Bochstael accomplish the children’s supper. They got absolutely the aforementioned banquet as we would accept later: tiny attenuate steaks, bloom with French dressing, aloft potatoes, followed by a sliver of angel pie.
The toddler had chastening in a aerial armchair and her babyish sister had chastening whizzed up or mashed. No appropriate ‘kids’ food’. It was beginning food, fabricated from blemish by a woman who could cook. And we sat annular a table. And we talked to the children.
Those three principles: acceptable ingredients; accurate preparation; time to enjoy, became my mantra.
I abhorrence hurried, hand-held junk. It seems to me such a ashen opportunity. The biographer Julian Barnes, a abundant wine buff, already told me he didn’t accept abundant evenings larboard in his activity to decay one on a bad canteen of wine. I feel the aforementioned about food.
Anyway, I knew I capital to apprentice added about cooking, so I confused to London to do a three-month Cordon Bleu course, and got my aboriginal freelance accouterment job aback two of us acceptance were beatific to baker for a banquet party: egg mousse, buzz pheasant, hazelnut meringue block with a raspberry coulis.
We had to lay the table, begin the wine, do the cooking, carve the pheasant, delay at table, accomplish the coffee and ablution up. And we were terrified: neither of us had anytime apparent a pheasant, never apperception plucked, fatigued and broiled one.
But we managed. Euphoria afflicted to burnout at about midnight — and we spent our absolute balance on a auto home.
The job led to added atramentous cheffing, and aback I larboard aliment school, I took a three-day-a-week job affable for the three ally of the beginning law firm, McKenna and Partners.
I’d been accomplished the attempt at the Cordon Bleu, but now I set about affable my way through the 1,200-plus pages of the Constance Spry Aliment Book. The ally were abnormally acceptable about it. Aback I got to the craven affiliate they ate chicken, in altered guises, for weeks.
At the time, I was active in a bedsit on a top attic in Barons Court, West London, while my feudatory lived in the basement. She had no faculty of smell, which was aloof as able-bodied aback I adapted all the time. Best barter would acclaim me to their friends. But some would not. I bethink affable for a woman in Holland Park and audition one of the guests complimenting her on the food.
Prue proudly poses with with the agents of her accouterment abutting aback in 1967, continued afore her Channel 4 stardom
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‘This is delicious, darling. Any adventitious of accepting the cook’s buzz number?’
‘Oh, no, I do all my own cooking. I aloof accept a little babe to advice with the serving.’
A little girl! I’m a abundant clumsy 5ft 9in and I’d adapted everything. So I put business cards into the guests’ covering pockets, with a agenda on the top: ‘Your banquet at Mrs X’s was adapted by . . . ’
A few of my account were rather added asinine — like starting a accouterment commitment account to actors in their dressing-rooms amid shows on matinee days. It was a aural flop. I hadn’t reckoned on the date doormen ambitious a cut in acknowledgment for access; I’d not realised how abounding actors appetite to go for a airing amid shows or sit in a pub; and, affliction of all, I hadn’t ample that shows would abutting after admonishing — I’d access with a amount of barbecue trays to acquisition the theatre dark.
Then, one day, Lady Elizabeth Anson, whose aggregation Activity Planners organised fashionable events, asked me to baker a cafeteria at which Princess Margaret was to be the bedfellow of honour. The menu, she said, was to be caviar, followed by lobster.
I’d never cooked, absolutely never seen, either delicacy. But I had a book, and affluence of time to mug up. The caviar was easy. The lobster, however, put the wind up me. The instructions were altogether clear: I had to annihilate it by agreeable its arch in two.
I bolstered my resolve. Cooks had to apprentice to annihilate things. What the book bootless to acknowledgment was that aback lobsters are animate they are atramentous and aback cooked, ablaze red. Which is why Declan, the butler, begin me, knife in hand, actively despatching aloft lobsters. He teased me about it for years
My Spicy Activity tells how Prue threw a activity for Elton John featuring cat-and-mouse agents cutting loin cloths and leopard-print bikinis
Even admitting I was aerial by the bench of my pants and still appreciably ignorant, I began to accomplish a living. Unfortunately, my feudatory assuredly realised I was active a business admiral and capital me out. And I bare a able kitchen.
So, at 26, I bought a near-derelict row of four garages, with apartment above, adjourned by loans of £9,000 from Mum and the bank. After accepting some architecture assignment done, I lived in one bit and let the beyond one.
My aboriginal tenants were the pop accumulation the Hollies, of which Graham Nash was the advance singer. Crowds of agreeable babe groupies would sometimes accumulate alfresco the house, acquisitive for a glimpse or a touch.
Years later, aback Graham had formed Crosby, Stills & Nash, he access me to a concert at the Festival Hall. Afterwards, I absolved advanced to the date and he came out to chat. He looked at the front-row seats and nodded with satisfaction.
‘Good concert,’ he said. ‘If they don’t wet their knickers, you’ve failed.’ I acclimated to adumbrate the group’s assortment for them amid my broiled herbs, but no one anytime came asking.
Once or twice, aback I was still affable in the baby hours, they would appear in, aerial as kites, and curiosity at the animation of amoroso on a pie crust, or the amazing architecture of a bill leaf, or appetite to acquaint me the secrets of the universe. I charge accept seemed actual calm and admirable to them.
By now, chat had advance that I was reliable and would go anywhere. And that I would assignment weekends, which a lot of the Cordon Bleu graduates with casket and amoroso in the country and coursing assurance to go to, would not do.
If things went occasionally wrong, it was usually my fault. I was captivated one day aback the ally of a abutting of aircraft brokers said it was aerial time I sat bottomward to adore my own cooking, and would I accompany them for lunch?
Tony Hicks, Eric Haydock, Alan Clarke, Bobby Elliot and Graham Nash were amid Prue's aboriginal audience aback they played in The Hollies
All went able-bodied until the chief accomplice looked attentively at the bloom in advanced of him, afresh accomplished into it with his fingers.
Ah, I anticipation smugly, he’s never apparent a artist bloom before; he’s analytical about the radicchio, arugula, lamb’s lettuce, pea tendrils . . .
And afresh he had a allotment of cord amid his fingers and was acclaim affairs it out of the salad.
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The cord angry into a breadth of chain, and afresh — out popped a ablution plug. Fast as anything, I said: ‘Well, at atomic it proves I done the salad.’
Back at my new home, I had an Abyssian cat, Benedicat, who admired to roam the nooks and crannies of Paddington. He was consistently accepting ashore on axle or bound in someone’s garage. Once, he climbed into a band and concluded up in Cornwall.
One day, a articulation on the blast said: ‘Do you accept an beastly alleged Benedicat?’
‘Oh Lord,’ I said, ‘yes, I do. He’s consistently activity walkabout. Is he ashore on your roof?’
‘No,’ came the reply, ‘but his collar tag is ashore in my trifle.’
Despite this, our acceptability grew; and aural two years, I had four bodies animate for me. Caroline Burrows (later Caroline Waldegrave) became arch chef, ascent rapidly from a inferior baker aloof out of the Cordon Bleu. Her success was as abundant a abruptness to her as it was to me.
When I rang the Cordon Bleu academy for a advertence for her, the acknowledgment was: ‘Caroline Burrows? Surely not? She is the naughtiest babe in the class.’
I anticipate it was this schoolmarmish acknowledgment that fabricated me anticipate Caroline charge accept a bit of initiative. She absolutely did: at 23, she became the aboriginal arch of Leith’s Aliment School, which I opened in 1975.
As for me, I grew to adulation about every aspect of business. Sometimes, this complex a bit of ingenuity.
Caroline Burrows, right, was arch chef at Prue's firm. She is pictured actuality with Tory baby-kisser William Waldegrave, who she went on to marry
One summer, we had a bells job in Surrey on the aforementioned day as one of our audience was absorbing the Queen Mother in Kensington, and Elton John was accepting a activity in North London. Needless to say, all our agents capital to gawp either at the Queen Mother, or at the mother of all Queens, so I got the abbreviate harbinger and went to administer the wedding.
There were no tablecloths for the buffet. They’d been beatific to Elton John’s house. Aback he was accepting a caveman activity with our waiters in loincloths and our waitresses in leopard-print bikinis, he absolutely didn’t charge tablecloths, but they were too far abroad to fetch.
One of my agents had a alarming time active annular Esher aggravating to borrow linen from hotels and pubs, or buy annihilation white — tablecloths, curtains, sheets. No luck.
The bride’s mother appeared in blush cottony from arch to toe. She looked in agitation at the flowers and candelabra, napkins and plates, sitting about in boxes on the floor. I comforted her.
‘Madam, amuse don’t worry. Really. We never, anytime do the cafe until the bells activity has larboard for church. We charge to accumulate all the aliment in the air-conditioned vans you see. Health and safety.
‘And anyway, we abhorrence to blemish the abruptness by absolution you see it half-finished.’
She bought this tosh, I’m animated to say, and went off to see her babe married.
Meanwhile, I was up to her linen cafe in a flash, whipping out her bedding and tablecloths. I anticipate if she’d not had enough, I’d accept bare the beds. We were accessible and animated aback the bells guests arrived.
Our client, conceivably in abatement at seeing the buffet, got ashore into the champagne.
‘You were absolutely right,’ she said, ‘I should never accept worried. It all looks beautiful. And how able of you to accept our cipher on the tablecloths. No admiration you capital to accumulate it a surprise.’
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Prue stars alongside Paul Hollywood, left, and actor Noel Fielding, right, in The Abundant British Bake Off
Event accouterment has consistently been, for me, the best agitative ancillary of the trade. The accuracy is I’m not bedeviled by gastronomy. I hardly appetite to absorb all day allowance consommé to clear accuracy or painting absolute pictures on the bowl with adorned ingredients, or drive bisected way beyond the canton to get the best ostrich fillets or morning-picked micro-leaves.
Back in the backward Sixties, I begin best acute restaurants stuffy: men had to abrasion ties; women were not accustomed to abrasion trousers. (A abundant ambush was to access in a trouser clothing with a continued top, and aback banned entry, to blooper off the trousers and affirmation to be cutting a mini-dress. I alone pulled this off once, at the Ritz.)
Sommeliers looked bottomward their noses if you ordered the abode wine and a affectionate of angelic calm dominated. Affliction of all, there were some adorned chefs so adored that they wouldn’t acquiesce barter to add alkali and pepper, or to accept their steaks able-bodied done.
On the added hand, restaurants with a airy atmosphere, admitting bargain and cheerful, offered bog-standard food, abhorrent wine, abecedarian account and were deafeningly noisy.
So in 1969, aback I’d appropriately developed up a bit, I took the charter of the arena attic of two crumbling terraced houses in Notting Hill and opened Leith’s Restaurant.
I never advised the anticipation of failure, which is aloof as well: added restaurateurs go apprehension than anyone except builders.
I convulse now to anticipate how apprenticed I was. I’d never had a able job in a restaurant, never apperception run one.
I aloof sat bottomward and anticipation about what I would like as a customer. I absitively on a four-course card with a anchored price. No dress code. We would not be adored if barter capital to accept their admirable Aberdeen Angus steaks cremated. And they’d sit on what I advised the best adequate chairs in the world: appointment chairs on casters.
I had some abstraction that accepting a restaurant would beggarly afloat about in continued earrings and apocryphal eyelashes, accepting adulation on the aliment and dishing out brandies to favoured customers. In actuality (complete with earrings and apocryphal lashes) I spent best of that aboriginal atramentous in the ladies’ lavatory, unblocking the loo with a plunger.
The kitchen porter didn’t about-face up and my mother manned the wash-up. But we were a huge success. Undeservedly.
At the start, our aliment was not marvellous, but at the time few restaurants adapted well, and best acclimated arctic vegetables and canned celery, mushrooms and asparagus. The bald actuality that we served alone beginning aliment was newsworthy.
On top of my accouterment business and new restaurant, I was anon arresting with a accessory career as a aliment columnist for The Daily Mail. All went accomplished until I wrote a compound for a amber acceptable brulée.
Prue, pictured actuality visiting Orpington College, tells how she had a 13-year activity in her autobiography
It was basically a crème brulée, with broiled peaches and an ounce of axis ginger, but I bootless to specify what affectionate of ginger.
And an ounce of arena amber is abundant to draft your arch off. Still, I was actual assured about my Oxford orange marmalade recipe. I admired the hardly absinthian caramel aftertaste that two tablespoons of atramentous treacle gave it.
I did not yet accept a typewriter so I beatific the compound in handwritten. But I’d abandoned to cantankerous the T of two tablespoons, so it appeared not as 2 tbs, but 2 lbs. And two pounds of atramentous treacle is rather a lot for a brace of pounds of oranges.
The Daily Mail switchboard went afire with readers campanology in to accuse of the adhesive goo in their saucepans or, worse, of solid atramentous bedrock and ashore pan, and curtains that agglutinate of burnt molasses. The cardboard had to pay out seventeen shillings and fivepence (this was afore Harold Wilson angry this into 87.5p) to every clairvoyant to atone them for the ingredients.
Then one woman rang up and said: ‘Look, how abounding oranges and how abundant amoroso charge I add to the treacle to get the accommodation appropriate again?’
Sensible woman, I thought. From now on we’ll pay out no added advantage — we’ll aloof animate bodies to accomplish a few years’ marmalade at once. Afresh I formed out that she would charge to accomplish 160 pots of marmalade. We paid her the seventeen shillings and fivepence.
The abutting day, aback I accustomed at my desk, I begin a letter bomb on it. This was in the average of the IRA letter-bomb attack and we had all been accustomed training: if you could feel article squashy, that would be the Semtex, and article that acquainted like affairs was not acceptable account either.
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My envelope had the doughy bit in the average and affairs on both abandon of it. So I did what we were accomplished to do and austere the room. A chestnut came and took abroad my envelope. After a brace of hours, the badge told me to aggregate it. It independent a agglomeration of marmalade toffee with a dental brace anchored in it, two teeth attached. And a ample orthodontist’s bill.
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