Affairs, drugs, an orgy and an illegal abortion – we reveal the X-rated past of Mary Berry’s Bake Off replacement Prue Leith
NEW Bake Off judge Prue Leith has the perfect ingredients to replace Mary Berry.
Both have built hugely successful business empires, are respected by foodies across the nation and have spent decades at the top, becoming firm friends in the process.
But while clean-cut Mary, 81, braved cheeky double entendres, Prue, 76, has lived an X-rated life of orgies, drugs, flings and illegal backstreet abortions.
As one friend put it: “Prue is very much a Channel 4 version of Mary — a wholesome cook, with bags of expertise . . . and a deliciously scandalous past.”
The Sun revealed Prue will pair up with Paul Hollywood, 50, on Britain’s most popular show, which moves from BBC1 to C4 later this year in a £75million move.
The high-pressure switch will turn the South African-born cook, writer and restaurateur from an expert revered in food circles into a household name overnight.
Hard-working Prue set up her catering business aged 20 before establishing the Leith’s School of Food and Wine, which went on to become a training ground for telly chefs including Lorraine Pascale.
Feared he’d turn into devouring monster
And she is no stranger to the bright lights of TV.
She was a judge on BBC2’s Great British Menu for a decade until quitting last year. Her flirty relationship with co-judges Matthew Fort and Oliver Peyton was one of the show’s trademarks — the three even stripped off for a naked photoshoot together.
But Prue has always had a soft spot for men, especially those that come with a degree of risk.
Most scandalous was her 13-year affair with the husband of her mum’s best friend, who she eventually married.
Writing in her 2012 autobiography Relish, she admitted to falling “completely, thunderously and irredeemably” for writer and business man Rayne Kruger, telling how the pair would experiment with drugs before romping.
Prue, who was just 21 while her lover was 39, had always seen Rayne as “half uncle, half godfather” and described their relationship as “practically incest” — but she found the attraction impossible to resist.
They were married for 28 years and had two children, before his death in 2002, aged 80.
She said: “Of course, I realise my affair with Rayne was unforgivable. I still believe adultery is wrong and feel genuinely angry with men who betray their wives, and prefer to forget that I encouraged Rayne to do just that.
“Poor Nan (Munro, Rayne’s wife) had no idea what a serpent she had allowed into her nest.
“Betraying the hospitality and love of Nan should have been impossible for me but I pushed all feelings of anxiety and guilt away. I refused to think about it, at least at first.
“Somehow I managed to persuade myself that what we were doing was nothing to do with anyone else. It was the age-old excuse of all adulterers. I couldn’t help it.
“He knew where to get hold of joints and numbered some dodgy, but interesting, Soho low-lives among his friends.”
His dark connections led Prue, still in the early stages of building her cookery business, to experiment with more serious substances, including LSD, and indulge in a wealth of sexual experimentation.
She recalled: “Once or twice things went badly wrong. Rayne believed drugs should be legalised and I believed whatever Rayne believed. But then one night he appeared with two small white pills. They were LSD.
Rayne believed drugs should be legalised and I believed whatever Rayne believed
“We had a horrible time. Blissful at first, floating, aware of the beauty of anything and everything, music sounding like never before, food ambrosia, love transporting.
“And then suddenly we were into a nightmare of terror and hallucination. The walls seemed to breathe in and out, and the air became visible and moving like a 3D fabric.
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“My arms melted, the flesh dripping off the bones. I could not even look at Rayne for fear he would turn into a devouring monster.
“Even his back swelled like an orangutan’s and I knew if he turned around that would be the end of me.”
The experience continues to haunt her. She occasionally wakes from a deep sleep and relives the moment, although insists the incident put an end to her “cavalier” approach to drug use.
Drugs were not her only vice. Prue lost her virginity at 15 and developed a penchant for flings with older men. On one occasion, her horrified parents caught her snogging a married dad of two.
Her liberal approach to sex would later find her in dire straits.
After bedding a French circus performer named Guy while in Paris, she was forced to undergo an illegal backstreet abortion in a desperate bid to hide her active sex life from her parents.
She said: “I lived with constant fear of pregnancy. When I was late by a few days, I panicked. Guy took me to a friend of a friend of the café owner on the corner, a small silent woman at the top of a silent dark house.
“I was terrified that she would stick knitting needles up me and give me peritonitis but I was even more frightened of my parents.
It was an organised orgy, and we were the only ones with clothes on
“My father’s dictum that women who ‘did it’ before marriage were sluts tortured me. Oddly it never occurred to me to weigh the moral question of abortion.
“Mercifully, knitting needles did not feature. The woman gave me an injection, God knows of what, and relieved me of a fortnight’s allowance. And absolutely nothing happened except that, as the days passed, I felt increasingly ill with anxiety. And then, a fortnight later, presto — not for the first time, the ‘curse’ came as a blessing.”
During her Parisian adventure, she attended an orgy where she found herself transfixed by the naked male bodies on display, as young men and women writhed on the floor and swapped partners.
Although she refused to participate, Prue recalled: “One room was carpeted with wall-to-wall copulation, young bottoms going up and down like bouncy castles.
“It was an organised orgy, and we were the only people with any clothes on.
“I kept mine on for a while but soon realised that this just encouraged treaties from men to join in. So I undressed too and at once became less conspicuous.
“I spent the next two hours walking purposefully from room to room, trying to look as if I had a sexual tryst arranged in the next room or was on my way to the bar or the loo, and avoiding the men patrolling the party, c***s aloft.
“They brought to mind cars prowling about in search of a slot to park in. I was amazed at the variety of models on offer.
“I was torn between wanting to look and not wanting to be seen looking.
“One guy was so proud of his, and it was impressive, that he never put it to use — he merely paraded about like an athlete with an Olympic banner.”
Prue, who was awarded an OBE 1989 and CBE in 2010 for her services to the catering industry, still has a complicated love life — to outsiders, at least.
Last year she married retired clothes designer John Playfair, 69, but confessed they live in separate homes, a mile apart.
She explained: “It’s the ideal thing. What you want — and what I get — is him without his clobber and without the responsibility of looking after his laundry or sewing on his buttons.
“We just want to be Mr and Mrs. It’s about happiness and commitment, to have and to hold, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.
“Somehow, for all the trashy novels and soppy films, those words still do the business.”