Dame Prue Leith's first kitchen was very small, and she stored seafood in her landlady's bath.

After more than 60 years as a chef, Bake Off star Prue Leith knows exactly what ingredients are needed to cook up a perfect kitchen. The culinary queen of colour, 83, recently designed the kitchen of her dreams in the fabulous Cotswolds home she built from scratch just before lockdown.



But when Prue talks about her first-ever kitchen – in a cramped London bedsit in the 1960s – it’s clear cooking for a living wasn’t always so cushy.

Prue, who is currently touring a one-woman show sharing hilarious anecdotes with her army of loyal fans, is a lively raconteur as well as a great chef.

‘I started my first catering business in 1961 from a bedsitter in Earl’s Court that had an electric cooker in one corner and a bed in the other. I had an old door under the bed which I pulled out and put on top of the bed to use as a work surface along with my dressing table.

I was on the top floor of this large house and I would be washing lettuces and storing crabs and mussels in the bath on the landing. Fortunately my landlady had no sense of smell and never came upstairs – so she had no idea I was running a business from up there. I was soon catering for rather large numbers at cocktail parties and would deliver all the food in my little three-wheel bubble car.

‘Of course these were the days way before Health & Safety. One time I was washing the floor in the bedsit and got a mighty electric shock from the cooker and was thrown across the room.’



After more than 60 years as a chef, Bake Off star Prue Leith knows exactly what ingredients are needed to cook up a perfect kitchen. The culinary queen of colour, 83, recently designed the kitchen of her dreams in the



After more than 60 years as a chef, Bake Off star Prue Leith knows exactly what ingredients are needed to cook up a perfect kitchen. The culinary queen of colour, 83, recently designed the kitchen of her dreams in the fabulous Cotswolds home she built from scratch just before lockdown.



But when Prue talks about her first-ever kitchen – in a cramped London bedsit in the 1960s – it’s clear cooking for a living wasn’t always so cushy.

Prue, who is currently touring a one-woman show sharing hilarious anecdotes with her army of loyal fans, is a lively raconteur as well as a great chef.

‘I started my first catering business in 1961 from a bedsitter in Earl’s Court that had an electric cooker in one corner and a bed in the other. I had an old door under the bed which I pulled out and put on top of the bed to use as a work surface along with my dressing table.

‘I was on the top floor of this large house and I would be washing lettuces and storing crabs and mussels in the bath on the landing. Fortunately my landlady had no sense of smell and never came upstairs – so she had no idea I was running a business from up there. I was soon catering for rather large numbers at cocktail parties and would deliver all the food in my little three-wheel bubble car.

‘Of course these were the days way before Health & Safety. One time I was washing the floor in the bedsit and got a mighty electric shock from the cooker and was thrown across the room.’





(Image Source: https://metro.co.uk)





Prue went on to perfect her design skills after going on to renovate two London flats and then two country houses. But it was in her current home where she was finally able to harness



(Image Source: https://metro.co.uk)



(Image Source: https://metro.co.uk)

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