I ABSOLUTELY love attention!

Great British Bake Off judge Prue Leith on global fame, building her dream home and Paul Hollywood's wedding plans

Dame Prue Leith has been in Florida a month by the time w&h catches up with her, enjoying a well-earned breather. Her trip began in New York with a two-day ‘try-out’ of her new one-woman stage show Nothing in Moderation, then, after performances in Los Angeles, Prue and her husband John Playfair drove 4,000 miles to Florida via Texas. The journey took a fortnight.

‘It makes driving to Scotland look like riding to the supermarket,’ laughs The Great British Bake Off judge who is now, she notes, more famous in America than Britain thanks to the show being one of the country’s most streamed series.

‘I can’t walk down a street, even in Florida or Texas, without somebody stopping me and saying, “Are you off the Bake Off show?,”’ says Prue, who turns 83 on 18 February.

She replaced Mary Berry on the Channel 4 programme in 2017, and is joining Bake Off judge and fellow chef Paul Hollywood, 56, on the US version, The Great American Baking Show. ‘Bake Off has been a springboard for me and not many people have this happen to them as octogenarians!’

With 14 cookbooks, including her latest, Bliss on Toast, eight novels and a memoir to her name, plus a cookery school in her native South Africa, Prue will this year return for Bake Off ’s 14th series, after embarking on no topic is off the menu.