Tragic Details About Prue Leith

Dame Prue Leith is one accomplished lady. She's best known as the quippy sidekick to Paul Hollywood on U.K.'s beloved "The Great British Bake Off," yet Leith's cultural impact began decades earlier. Before television fame, Leith was a successful chef, caterer, and author staking her claim in male-dominated industries many times over. Along the way, Leith endured tragic times in her private and public life.

Leith's life may look like a literal cake walk these days, but this wasn't always the state of things for the plucky dame. Many women of her distinction would prefer to shroud past mistakes and unpleasant memories — but that's not Leith's style. Instead, she uses her platform as a way to be candid about her experiences and stand up for causes she believes in. This hasn't been without controversy. Several of Leith's revelations — be they about politics, social issues, or her own life — have been a source of backlash, promoting a need for the dame to defend herself from brutal headlines in the British press, cruel commentary on social media, or both.

Through it all, Leith, now 84, maintains that being able to speak openly about the difficulties she has overcome is a cathartic process. Leith's singular point of view — framed behind her signature, bold-hued spectacles — is shaped by her life's imperfections and serves as a testament to her wisdom. These are the details behind some of Prue Leith's toughest moments. 

Prue Leith had a privileged upbringing, but its circumstances were tied to unsettling truths. She was born in 1940 in South Africa, then a sovereign state of Great Britain. Leith was just a young girl when apartheid — the legal separation of races — became national law. As a result, the only non-white people Leith ever interacted with growing up were servants that worked in her home.

Still, Leith's family was liberal, and opposed South Africa's political situation. Leith's mother, a stage actress, was a founder of The Black Sash, a women's group that publicly protested against apartheid. Leith herself was arrested for protesting with some fellow students, but it wasn't until she went to Paris as a teenager that she realized how little she understood about non-segregated society.

Before Paris, Leith never shared public spaces or had social contact with people of other races and the prospect of doing so was a revelation. In conversation with Big Issue, she said, "If I could go back to the teenage Prue now I'd tell her to be more sensitive about what it was like to be repressed ... I'm ashamed to think how, when I was 16, I skipped down the street giggling away with my girlfriends, and venerable old black men would get off the pavement and walk in the gutter so these idiots, who didn't even notice him, could pass by."

Talk long enough with someone in their '80s and you're bound to hear of once-normalized practices that wouldn't go over well today. That was precisely what Leith sought to convey when she opened up about a tragic childhood event. When she was around 11, Leith's mother instructed her to drown a bag of newborn kittens in effort to curb feline overpopulation in the region of South Africa where they lived. 

The traumatic experience was detailed in her 2012 memoir "Relish: My Life on a Plate," later released in the U.S. under the title "I'll Try Anything Once". Young Leith's initial pleas against hurting the litter were met with her mother's insistence: the kittens wouldn't know what was happening because they were only a few hours old. She submerged the bag until the last of them stopped mewing, but wrote that the image plagued her for weeks.

Public misinterpretation of the story caused a ruthless social media backlash, with some vowing to no longer watch "The Great British Bake Off" because of what Leith had done. Leith cleared the air to People Magazine saying, "I can't bear the thought that people on Twitter really think that I would want to drown kittens." She reiterated that the incident occurred over 70 years ago, and thankfully neutering cats is a more universal practice than it was back then.

While writing her memoir, Leith vowed to tell the story honestly. Among the many personal details she shared, her description of procuring an illegal abortion around age 15, was particularly brutal. Leith says she lost her virginity at 15, after being pressured by her then-boyfriend, but that her precocious streak continued.

She was a student at the Sorbonne in Paris and working as an au pair when she became pregnant. The father was a French circus performer who helped Leith gain access to an abortion — a dangerous and scary situation in the 1950s. Leith admits she was terrified that the procedure might go wrong, but that the fear of revealing the pregnancy to her parents was worse.

Leith was instructed to visit the top floor of a local house where she paid a woman to perform the abortion. Her assumption that the procedure would be painful or even barbaric proved incorrect — she was given an injection of an unknown substance which ended the pregnancy. This would not be the last time Leith's love life ventured into taboo territory.

Leith's public persona as a sexually liberated woman has been empowering to her female fan base, yet for 13 years her love life was a total secret. Not only did Leith spend over a decade of her life in an extra-marital affair, the man she fell for was the husband of Leith's mother's best friend. His name was Rayne Kruger and Leith had known him since she was a child.

In her memoir, Leith claims to have "hero-worshipped" Kruger from the age of seven. When Leith moved to England in the early 1960s, she stayed with Kruger and his wife, the actress Nan Munro, and it was then that their love blossomed. Leith knew it was wrong, but justified it by telling herself they simply couldn't help their feelings. Leith was getting her catering business off the ground when the affair began, and regarded Kruger — 20 years her senior — as the most influential person in her life. 

For the first 10 years, Leith enjoyed feeling loved without having to uphold typical wifely duties. Once in her thirties, Leith's desire to have children was too strong to ignore. She tried to leave Kruger and move on, but when she did get pregnant, the couple came clean. Leith and Kruger went on to marry and have two children. They were together until Kruger's death in 2002 at the age of 80.

As if carrying on a 13-year affair with a married family wasn't risqué enough, Leith also admitted she and lover Rayne Kruger dabbled in recreational drug use together. The substances were his influence — Leith said that Kruger believed drugs should be legalized, and that she was more than willing to go along with his beliefs. Kruger and Leith experimented with LSD (it was the '60s), however, one experience with the psychedelic had long-term effects on the would-be dame.

Leith recalls the trip starting off euphorically, until things took a sharp turn into the terrifying. Ghastly hallucinations invaded Leith's mind — the walls breathed and the air in the room was visible. She looked down and saw the skin on her arms dripping off the bones. Leith turned to her beloved, hoping for reprieve, but remembers his back appearing monstrously swollen, and swore that seeing his face would be something she could not handle.

One horrific acid trip was enough to steer Leith away from the drug for good. Unfortunately, as much as she wanted to forget about that time she touched LSD, she's been physically unable to. Nearly 40 years later, Leith said flashbacks and nightmares of the incident still plagued her — and that even into her sixties she woke from unsettling dreams and could still see the air in the room.

Leith initially made a name for herself with her catering company, Leith's Good Food, which she established at the age of 20. Leith's Good Food was a 30-year part of her gastronomical legacy, however, one tragic catering event threatened to shatter the reputation of the business. During her "Nothing In Moderation" speaking tour, Leith shared a tragic anecdote about people getting seriously sick at an event Leith's Good Foods catered.

She admitted that 28 people were hospitalized after eating the chicken and mayonnaise dish she and her staff served. One of the guests was in critical condition and Leith was afraid for his life. She said the problem arose due to the additional guests coming to the event intended to feed 25 people. To account for them, Leith's staff poached another chicken, but did so in a manner that allowed foodborne pathogens to develop. This chicken meat was mixed with the already-prepared chicken and mayonnaise, thereby tainting the entire batch of food.

Leith added that the venue had no refrigeration, so the dish sat out for the entire lunch service on a hot day. She said the event still haunts her, and that the man she nearly killed was an elderly High Court judge. She credits the early career blunder as a wake-up call.

Leith doesn't reserve her candor for juicy stories about herself. She also uses her status to fight for causes she feels passionately about ... even if they're touchy subjects. In 2012, Leith watched helplessly as her brother David died in immense pain from bone cancer. Seeing the agony David endured in his final days turned Leith into a staunch supporter of assisted dying.

David was 74 at the time of his death but was refused therapeutic doses of morphine because doctors feared legal repercussions. Hopeless and desperately ill, David refused antibiotics to treat his cancer-induced pneumonia so he could finally rest. Leith remains an outspoken member of Dying With Dignity, a campaign that works to overturn the U.K.'s current assisted dying ban.

The "Great British Bake Off" cast has Leith's back. Since 2018, the series has hosted "The Great Celebrity Bake Off for Stand Up To Cancer," a five-episode special in which famous Brits square off in the quest to be named star baker. The annual episodes help the Stand Up To Cancer organization raise money for Cancer Research UK. Like Leith, many of the celebrities who participate have joined the fight against cancer for personal reasons.

Leith's impenetrable wit gives her an uncanny ability to tell serious stories about her life in a lighthearted way. Her account of getting lost at sea is one example. What was supposed to be a spell of relaxation on the coastal waters of Sardinia shifted toward a brush with mortal danger when the motor boat Leith was lounging on broke down.

Unable to get the boat's engine started, Leith (and the boat) were at the mercy of the sea currents. She spent an entire day drifting on the water, her nervousness growing with each passing hour. The boats that passed weren't within shouting distance, so Leith tried to grab their attention by standing up and waving her arms. Mistaking her panic for enthusiasm, the boaters waved back and continued on their way.

Finally, a native fisherman recognized Leith dire situation. On the ride back, he lectured Leith on how her naive, touristy behavior could have drifted her out to Corsica. Leith, sunburnt and thirsty, was simply grateful to see land again.

Leith is just like us and she gets really down about trolling on social media. It's never easy to start a new job, and when Leith replaced Mary Berry on "Great British Bake Off" in 2017, she was entering a cast that had a well-established fan base. Leith's debut season went off without a hitch ... until an innocent mistake unleashed a mob of angry internet trolls on the already embarrassed dame.

As the season finale was set to air, Leith was instructed to congratulate the winner in a social media post after 10:30. Leith was in Bhutan at the time, where it was well past 10:30, so she fired off a congratulatory tweet to Season 8 winner Sophie Faldo. The problem of course, was that Bhutan is five hours ahead of London time, meaning Leith tweeted the finale results way too early.

Leith was quickly aware of her mistake and the tweet was deleted, but within the 89 seconds it was active, it had been retweeted. Leith described her reaction as "suicidal," mostly because she feared it would draw focus away from the hard-working winner. "You have to be a real idiot to do that," Leith confessed on an appearance of the U.K.'s "This Morning".

Leith's entrance into "The Great British Bake Off" family was not a departure from the show's original format — Leith replaced British cookery legend Mary Berry, who is five years her senior. Still, Leith's most successful television gig to date has sparked unnecessary scrutiny. Then again, the internet is never pleased for long.

The commentary lobbed Leith's way is beyond tone deaf. Like many multi-season reality competition shows, "The Great British Bake Off" is not without flaws. "GBBO"'s shortcomings have circled around its approaches to political correctness and inclusivity. Criticisms about Leith's age and judgmental commentary on her style of dress proved that prejudice is still a problem in many regards.

If anyone understands that, it's Leith, an octogenarian who has far more life experience than the average person. Leith maintains that the show is for people who are interested in baking and that there needn't be any controversy associated with the competition. She told "The Sacred Podcast," "I don't want to use the word 'safe space' but that's really what it is: it's somewhere where you can switch off for an hour, watch cake, what could be nicer than watching cake other than eating cake? And know that nothing nasty is going to happen. I mean, the only stress will be the bakers running out of time or something. It's not your stress, it's their stress."

Leith's first child with first husband Rayne Kruger is British politician Danny Kruger. In recent years, Kruger has taken conservative stances on pressing social issues. Leith states that while she will always love her son, she does not share his views on certain matters.

Kruger got himself into hot water when he proclaimed that women should not have complete "bodily autonomy" when it comes to abortion. Leith endured a heaping of vitriol from the public because of her son's statement. She quickly reminded everyone that she does not agree with what he said.

This was further represented when Leith and Kruger faced off about assisted dying — one of Leith's dear causes. To commemorate the discussion, they filmed a documentary-style debate. Their T.V. special "Prue and Danny's Death Road Trip" aired in 2023. In the short film, the duo tour North America while dissecting the finer points of assisted dying.

"The Great British Bake Off" is known as a festive show, so it was no surprise when the cast came out in school uniforms for a special episode with the cast of "Derry Girls" that aired in 2020. The one unexpected aspect of the getup was that Leith was on crutches. She revealed that she snapped her Achilles tendon while filming and was in recovery and was on crutches for two episodes.

The cast was filming a "Wizard of Oz" themed skit when Leith, who was portraying the Cowardly Lion, leapt onto the yellow brick road and felt a debilitating pain in her ankle upon landing. The injury forced Leith to rely on crutches or a wheelchair, which gave her a new perspective on the difficulties of being disabled. She told The Spectator that there are not nearly enough ramps to facilitate people on crutches and that using a wheelchair in Gatwick Airport resulted in her "being rescued by a stranger responding to your banging the door with a crutch."

It only seemed like a matter of time before Prue Leith took her show on the road. Leith's life has been colored with so many character-building experiences and her willingness to share then candidly has drawn an audience. As wise as Leith is, she found her foray into live public speaking unbearably anxiety-inducing.

Leith's stage fright nearly overcame the culinary veteran. She spoke of feeling nervous when her talking tour "Nothing In Moderation" was still in its early stages, and that extreme nervousness would grip her despite only four people being in the room. Before a live show in New York, Leith's anxiety caused her to lose her voice. On Leith's website, she recalls being sent "to a 'doctor to the stars,' who produces a cocktail of drugs which miraculously revive my voice."

Her on-stage jitters needed special attention. Leith said she took beta blockers on the recommendation of a doctor. The widely used anti-anxiety treatment allowed Leith to get more comfortable on tour, where she was especially excited to interact with her many fans.