Great British Bake Off star Prue Leith has opened up about her regrets and the criticism she's faced since joining the show. The 84 year old, who took over from Mary Berry in 2017, revealed in her book 'I'll Try Anything Once' that she wishes she had appreciated her looks more when she was younger.
The Bake Off icon wrote: "When I see pictures of myself in my twenties and thirties, I feel a pang of regret that I took no pleasure in my looks.
"I was convinced I was overweight and horse-faced. God, what I would give today to weight ten stone and get into a size twelve!"
Prue also confessed that she dislikes her own voice, recalling a social media post criticising it after she joined Bake Off. She penned: "I can't bear my schoolmistressy voice. One of the Bake Off fans, hearing of my appointment, tweeted 'OMG, NO. Prue Leith has the worst voice on television.' I rather agree."
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Despite initial backlash, Prue has won over viewers and enjoys the perks of being on the show.
She added: "The thing I love about filming is all the pampering, people doing my make-up and hair, fussing about how I look, fetching me in posh cars. I confess to finding a bit of fame highly enjoyable."
"I like being stopped in the supermarket and being told how great the show is, or that I don't look a day over sixty-five. I know people say what they think you want to hear but that's fine by me," reports Birmingham Live.
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"It is what I want to hear. I adore being referred to, even as a joke, which it usually is, as 'the talent'. The talent! It hardly takes talent to be filmed eating cake and saying what you think of it."
In recent months, Prue has reflected on her future and told Bella magazine that she "won't leave [Bake Off] in a hurry". With regard to her own mortality, she added that because she was "so near the end" that she was "a bit more reckless now".
It is this newfound spirit that Prue hinted had led to her catwalk debut at London Fashion Week. She explained: "If I was about to try to get a job on Bake Off I probably wouldn't walk down a catwalk in Latex with goth make-up on, but now it's too late.
"If I want to do it and it sounds like good fun I just think, 'why not? The crowd could not have been kinder, whooping and hollering at the gallant old lady (84 and counting) giving it a go. I'm just such an egotist, lapping up the attention."
