Prue Leith is insatiable. One of her earliest memories is her father saying “never get between Prue and her victuals”. But this hunger and passion is for pretty much everything: gardening, the countryside, food production, fishing, The Great British Bake Off, universities, television, British Rail, cats, her dogs Tattie and Teasel [pictured] and more.

Paris, where she was studying at the Sorbonne, was where she learnt about food and really fell in love with it. What followed, in typical Leith-like fashion, was her fascination with everything related. This included a desire to help and educate. “I’ve spent my life complaining that food education in schools hardly exists,” she says. “If children don’t know where food comes from and how to cook, they’re never going to see the point of eating properly. If we could teach one generation of schoolchildren to prefer healthy meals to rubbish, then we’d solve the obesity problem, help the NHS and have a lot of people living longer, happier lives.”

This huge subject has been a theme of Leith’s career and sent her down various avenues. In the early days she tried to supply her restaurant from her own garden. “It was a complete disaster,” she remembers. “My chef would object to carrots turning up all knobbly and bifurcated; if they grow in very rich soil, carrots tend to go into two or three legs. Chefs absolutely hate that because they’re difficult to peel. I battled on and would be up at 6am picking all these vegetables. I was quite relieved when the chef went on strike because one of the customers had found a caterpillar in the salad,” she admits.

Leith believes that we’re losing connection with the land. “It’s not just the food thing. I honestly think that walking on the grass in bare feet, strolling in woods, climbing a tree or rolling down a hill is just so good for you,” she declares with characteristic gusto. “We lived in Paddington when my little boy was born. And then I adopted his sister, so I had two two-year-olds. We’d go to the supermarket where I’d end up with both lying on the ground screaming but I’d take them into the park and within seconds they’d be running around laughing and playing. Outside is just good for you.”

According to Leith, much food production is still inhumane and, as such, the 2017 film Eating Animals – which tackles the transformation from traditional to industrial farming – should be compulsory viewing in schools. “Children would then say when they went home ‘we don’t want the cheapest chicken but would rather have it once a month if it had a happy life’. Sadly, to get a good free-range chicken costs around £12 to £20 if it’s a big one, which is just not affordable for most people.

Laying hens

“There’s a farm near us that is absolutely brilliant. The farmer has 3,000 laying hens. They have three barns that are all nicely kitted out with straw. Each barn has its own field and part of the wood beyond. On a lovely day the hens are all in the woods but when it rains they’re inside watching telly,” she says. There’s another type of farming that Leith has strong views on, and that’s salmon farming.

Salmon farming

“Not only are many fish sick but they are covered in lice. The salmon might look perfect sitting there on the supermarket shelves but it tastes of nothing,” she insists. “The flesh can be really flabby because so often they’ve been in an overstocked pond where they can hardly move.”

Leith herself is a keen fisherman. “I love fishing,” she says. “I think I’ve fished for salmon in every Scottish river, as well as in Norway and Iceland, although not so much now because my shoulder doesn’t work as well as it did. I find it more comfortable doing it from a boat these days; it’s easier on the feet.”

Since announcing that she wouldn’t be returning for another series of ‘Bake Off’ (like Leith herself, considered by its hordes of fans a British institution), surely she has more time on her hands? Possibly but not a great deal. She likes to be busy, and served as chancellor of Queen Margaret University from 2017 until 2024 as well as being a board member of British Railways while juggling a myriad of other commitments. “Of course, leaving has opened up a whole heap of other possibilities,” she says. “I never want to stop filming because I enjoy that. My husband, John, and I still have our show on Saturday mornings, Prue Leith’s Cotswold Kitchen.” Curiously enough she seems to have met her match in John Playfair, who is someone who also likes to have a project and is about to try a vineyard, she tells me.

Leith, who is 86, puts her voracious appetite down to energy that she inherited from her mother: “I would love to be able to claim that I’ve got some secret but I’m just lucky; I feel well, I wake up and I want to do stuff. I like work. I like writing. I like cooking. I like travelling. I like new things and none of that has reduced,” she says. Fortunately she has offered some guidance for the rest of us – with palpable joy – in her latest book: Being Old… and Learning to Love it! Perhaps one recipe for such a long and active life is never to put obstacles in the way of one’s victuals? Prue Leith’s book Being Old… and Learning to Love It! is available now

Image credit: Nicky Johnston