'Great British Baking Show' Judge Prue Leith Isn't Ready to Retire Yet

Transcript

00:00You've been doing Bake Off since 17? Yeah. So do you see yourself doing it in the long term for

00:06like a lot longer? It can't be a long term. I'm 80. I'll be 85 in February. Well, a lot of long

00:11term is not something I have any chance of seeing. But I don't, if you're asking me, am I planning to

00:19retire? No, I'm not. I love doing it. And as long as they'll have me, I will want to do it. The

00:26only thing I'd say is that because obviously I'm going to have to retire sometime soon because I

00:32can't, I wouldn't be able to do it forever. But I want to get out before I'm pushed home.

00:39So I don't want to get to the stage that, you know, somebody politely says, you know, Prue,

00:44it's been 10 years now. It's been nine years now. I really think perhaps, you know, we should think

00:50about a change. I don't want that conversation. I want to be gone before that conversation.

00:56But it's going to be up to my husband and my best friends to tell me when, look, you know,

01:02it's enough. We can't have you hobbling onto the stage, you know. I was going to say, I can't

01:09imagine anyone having that conversation with you. But you feel like your loved ones will sit you

01:13down and be like, it's time. Yes, I think so. Because I probably won't know. Although I mean,

01:19I already feel that I'm not as well. I know I'm not as physically agile as I was eight years ago,

01:26for example. And I asked them to put a ramp. Not this year, funnily enough, I didn't mind the step

01:33this year. But last year, because I'd had a bad leg, they put it into a ramp for me to get onto

01:38the stage so that I didn't. So just he said, I thought that ramp was really good. And we didn't

01:44have it last year. So I think I'll ask them for next year. Can I have the ramp back?

01:48I am very excited about your new cookbook.

01:52Good. That is a lovely title that I am going to mess up if I try and say it.

01:59Shall I say it for you? Yes, please. Please do. It's called Life's Too Short to Stuff a Mushroom.

02:06And that's correct. I feel like that is the vibe that a lot of our readers will certainly agree

02:13with. Well, I think that it sort of sums up what's in the book, which is basically,

02:20I'm trying to make a really good cooking with proper ingredients,

02:27a little bit quicker, a little bit more simple and understandable and nice and easy,

02:34and still be exciting and with proper... You see, when you say to somebody that a book is

02:42full of cheats and shortcuts, they think it means that you're going to suggest going to

02:48the supermarket, buying a ready meal, and then tarting it up with a bit of tomato salad or

02:52something. But I don't mean that at all. I'm still really keen on people cooking,

02:58but making it so that it's simple to do. And also, what stops a lot of people cooking

03:05is the fact that they don't, they've never learned the basics of how to chop an onion,

03:10how to get the stone out of an avocado, how to... So, what expressions in cooking mean,

03:19like sweat the onion? I mean, why should anybody who's never learned to cook know what that means?

03:24So, I want to make all that very clear, but clear not in a too teachy way, but in just a,

03:33look, this is really obvious and easy. And I've used a lot of QR codes so that people

03:39can actually see me chopping an onion or getting the stone out of an avocado. And instead of having

03:45to read some long, complicated instructions, which make you lose the will to live before

03:52you've ever got to getting the onion out, you could say, oh, well, gosh, that's quite easy.

03:58All you do is that, you know.