By rights, Prue Leith wouldn’t be having lunch with me in the Cotswolds. She would be on stage in Las Vegas or Miami Beach performing her one-woman show (suitably titled Nothing in Moderation). She did more than 30 sold-out dates in theatres in the UK earlier this year, and the plan was to do something similar in the States this autumn. She is not sure whether her US promoter got distracted or got cold feet, but she is sanguine about a change of plans. She has enjoyed a couple of rare unscheduled weeks at home instead. And no doubt, she suggests, another promoter can be found.
Leith inhabits a world where, at 83, the show will certainly go on. “The thing is,” she says, smiling at the idea, “in America, they can’t really escape me. Bake Off is very popular, and I also do their version, The Great American Baking Show. It’s funny,” she suggests, “in Britain, I don’t really notice people nudging each other when I walk in the street, though my husband says they do, but in New York, they don’t stand on ceremony, everyone just comes up to me …”
