Prue Leith

Prue Leith0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Prue Leith0:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My castaway this week is a professional cook. She started her first catering company nearly thirty years ago in a bed sitter in Earl's Court, where she washed the lettuce, or kept the lobsters, in the bath.

Presenter0:39

In nineteen sixty nine she opened her restaurant, which remains one of the most successful in London. Six years later came a school for chefs, both professional and amateur and most recently she's expanded further into mass catering, a brasserie in Hyde Park and cream teas at Hampton Court. Her philosophy of food is unpretentious. Keep it fresh and keep it simple, be it a banquet or a snack.

Presenter1:03

She's the woman they credit with uncurling the British Rail sandwich. She is Prue Leith.

Presenter1:09

All of which is is quite an achievement proof for someone who as a young woman had never, quite literally, I think, boiled an egg. Well, no, that's true. I had never boiled an egg. I was b born and brought up in South Africa.

Presenter1:20

And my mother couldn't cook. She was an actress, and she never cooked.

Presenter1:24

And of course, you know, black hands laid wonderful food in front of us, privileged whites, and we ate it. And it never occurred to me to go into the kitchen. But presumably you you liked your food, because people who don't like food can't cook. No. I'm always saying to young cooks, Are you greedy? because I do believe that the first requirement of successful cooks is greed. You have to love your grub. And you've got to keep tasting as you go. That's right, that's right. What's your favourite food? I mean, what would you order for your last supper before you depart for your desert island?

Prue Leith1:49

That's

Presenter1:56

Well, I think I'm going to disappoint you with this, but I think it might be bangers and mash, with onion gravy, and lots of butter and nutmeg in the mash. And mustard?

Presenter2:06

Yes, English mustard, but not much of it. It's interesting that your tastes are fundamentally traditional, aren't they?

Presenter2:12

Yes, they are. I think really, although there's been a lot of exciting development in food, you have to be very careful. The reason that fennel has been eaten with fish for years and years is because it tastes so good. I mean the the reason things last is because they're good. And to just chuck them out for the sake of fashion is just crazy. And bangers with mash are delicious.

Prue Leith2:32

Delicious

Presenter2:33

It's been around for a long time. So you get your sausage and mash, and then we push you off to this desert island, and then you arrive. When you sit down, what will be the first record that you would put on your gramophone?

Presenter2:43

But I think I'd need something uplifting and gentle at the same time, and I suppose it would be Mozart's horn concerto.

Speaker 43:18

Yeah.

Speaker 43:36

Uh

Speaker 43:37

Yeah.

Presenter3:49

Dennis Brain playing part of Mozart's Horn Concerto No. Four in E flat major, with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Herbert von Carrion.

Presenter3:57

So you say you were um born and brought up in South Africa with black cooks, Prue. I mean, did you never as a child even have the urge to make a jam tart? Oh, yes, certainly. And I I don't mean that the kitchen was taboo because it was so grand or anything. It was just that nobody thought that a career in cooking would be something that I'd be likely to do.

Presenter4:17

And my family weren't foodie at all.

Presenter4:19

And I used to go into the kitchen, and we had a wonderful Zulu cook called Charlie, and he used to sort of clear up after me, which now embarrasses me beyond belief that I would make this terrible mess, and he would clear it up after me.

Presenter4:32

But I made um I once made a Christmas cake with a icing.

Presenter4:36

Which I didn't put any glycerine into it, and it was concrete. And I remember my father splitting an ivory-handled knife, trying to open it with a sledgehammer. And finally, we turned it over and scooped the cake out from underneath. But did you think it was perhaps just something that you played at? Perhaps you didn't appreciate that cooking was a skill, it was just something that servants did, like scrubbing the floor. That's right. And in fact, when I went back to South Africa, having spent two years in France.

Prue Leith4:51

Something that's a

Prue Leith4:53

Uh

Presenter4:58

I grandly went into the kitchen and said I'll show Charlie how to make these wonderful French pancakes filled with seafood and

Presenter5:04

Source Mornay and stuff.

Presenter5:06

And I realised as I was grandly showing him that he was actually uncurdling my sauce, chopping parsley like a professional, and I could have learned to cook from Charlie. But you see, I never realised I could cook from Charlie. Tell me about the house, where it was, and what it was like. Well, it's still there, and it's a lovely house. It's in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg, very sort of leafy lanes.

Presenter5:31

Very middle class and nice, but I had a tremendously happy childhood. I mean, we were very privileged and very well off.

Presenter5:38

But there was no spoiling. I mean, my both my parents came from Scottish ancestry.

Presenter5:44

And we were very strictly brought up.

Presenter5:46

But tremendously happily. And your mother was an actress, you said. You said, that's right. And my father was in with ICI, a subsidiary of ICI.

Prue Leith5:48

And you

Prue Leith5:49

She said.

Presenter5:53

I said he was a businessman.

Presenter5:55

Did you notice then when you were small or did the system worry you at all or did you entirely take it for granted at part eight? That was something simply for granted. It's quite embarrassing. I go back to South Africa a lot now and certainly the changes are so radical that you wouldn't you for somebody like me who's been out of the country, it's quite startling.

Presenter6:15

There used to be the situation that if a white child walked into a shop and there was a queue of black people wanting to buy something,

Presenter6:23

That the people behind the counter would simply call the white child to the front and serve them first, and all the black people in the queue would accept this.

Presenter6:30

And I didn't think that was odd, because I'd grown up with it. Old black men would get off the pavement and walk in the gutter as white young women walked past. It was the most humiliating and disgraceful way of behaving, but everybody accepted it. My parents were very liberal, and we would be taught intellectually too.

Presenter6:49

not accept these sort of things, but of course um we did. But now I'm happy to say that I've just come back from South Africa and I saw no evidence whatever.

Presenter6:57

of that sort of social discrimination. Of course there's still a whole lot of things wrong.

Presenter7:01

But at what point i in your life did you realize this was a humiliating set up, as you call it? I think when I went to university, I was at Cape Town University, and we were at the time campaigning for blacks to be allowed into

Presenter7:13

white universities, which of course they now are.

Presenter7:15

And um I remember carrying leaflets and I got myself arrested in Cape Town. I was tremendously proud of myself because I'd got arrested for a political act and I was so angry because they released me instantly. They could tell that I was just a fellow traveller and not a very serious political actor. Was there any one particular event that that happened that brought it all home to you, this desperate inequality and unfairness?

Presenter7:40

No, I think my awareness has grown. Fer I think going to France and realizing that um

Presenter7:48

What it was like to live in a country where black people were treated equally was what really made me certain that I could never live in South Africa.

Presenter7:55

Let's have your second record.

Presenter7:57

Well, my second record's signed by Black Woman, and it's Back of the Moon from the first

Presenter8:02

black musical in South Africa called King Kong.

Presenter8:05

And I remember going to the first night. It was a black and white audience. It was one of the few multiracial cultural events. And it was the most sensational thing. I remember everybody standing and shouting at the end. And this is a great song.

Speaker 38:18

Back of the moon boys, back of the moon boys.

Presenter8:21

Uh

Speaker 38:21

Talks you mean in job back in the back of the moon There's no sign up, people line up Every night at the back of the moon The best known secret diving town Don't wipe up for miles around A garden get high when the lights are low Back of the moon is where the folks let go

Presenter8:46

Peggy Fango singing Back of the Moon from King Kong. So it was in France, Prue, that uh that you actually caught the food, the cooking bug? Absolutely. I mean, I'd gone to France because I had more or less failed at the university in in Cape Town, and I'd gone to France because I wanted to be a translator or

Prue Leith8:54

Uh

Presenter9:03

study French literature or something, and I just got hooked on food. I thought there's far more to Beuf Bourbignon than there is to Baudelaire. I think you know, I really became obsessed with food. It was sort of croissant in the street and and pancakes and pralin sold from a barrow and

Presenter9:18

And of course the fact that I w I worked au pair a lot of the time, and I worked for a woman

Presenter9:24

who had two small children, I was supposed to look after them, and I wasn't even allowed to mix the French dressing for the children's supper, because the fact that I spoke English would guarantee that I would ruin it.

Presenter9:33

I mean, she she wouldn't let me grill the children's steaks or anything. And I realized that there's a real skill to it and a and a passion that you must care about something deeply to do it well. But it is a whole way of life. It's part of the culture, isn't it? I mean food and clothes. Which we consider all, I think, a luxury, an indulgence even. And wicked. I think there's I suppose it's a cliché to say it, but I do think something t of the Calvinist and Puritan

Prue Leith9:46

Yeah.

Prue Leith9:52

And

Presenter10:00

Spirit is still so deeply in the British that they actually think it's wrong to enjoy themselves and spend money on food. They think it's sort of wicked. People often say to me, You know, for the price of the dinner in your restaurant I could buy a pair of shoes.

Presenter10:13

And I want to say, but you know, my th this is not a serious point.

Presenter10:18

You can buy a pair of shoes if you'd rather. Nobody complains when somebody spends a lot of money on golf and, you know, this expensive set of clubs and green fees and that's healthy, that's good, that's fine.

Presenter10:29

But um spending the same money on touring France to eat good food or

Presenter10:33

Having a lovely night out in a smart restaurant. I think you're right. I think it's an attitude, isn't it? Of really all one needs to do with food is stoke the boiler, stoke the body, put a cheese sandwich into it. It's sustenance.

Prue Leith10:42

He put a cheese in.

Presenter10:45

But how do you change the fundamental approach of a nation to its food? I mean, you can do what you can in restaurants and in cafeterias in mascoting, but how do you change the attitude to a salad presented in a hospital, for example, which is a lettuce leaf with no dressing and a quarter of tomato?

Presenter11:03

Very slowly and with great difficulty. So I wi if I'd known if I knew the answer to that, I would be in hospital catary.

Presenter11:09

Um

Presenter11:10

I don't know. I think i i it's coming. It really is. I mean, travelling abroad has changed people's perceptions. Street food is better than it used to be. Not I don't mean street barrow food, but I mean high street fast food is better than it used to be. But I don't know what the answer is. But freshness and simplicity are really the answer, as opposed to s synthetic stuff. Well, I think for my

Prue Leith11:28

Well this

Presenter11:29

My kind of catering, all I want to do is to do whatever it is really well, and I passionately believe that people will pay. Caterers have underestimated the public in England, or s certain sections of the public, for years. If all you give people is

Presenter11:44

um wrapped ice cream and um popcorn.

Presenter11:47

and um rather overstewed cup of

Presenter11:51

Coffee or something?

Presenter11:52

Then you're not going to get the sort of public who will buy a smoked salmon sandwich, or a good cheese sandwich, or pay an extra fiftypence for a excellent sandwich. If you do offer what?

Presenter12:01

You want to offer. There will be a public there to buy it, I'm sure of it.

Presenter12:06

Some more music

Presenter12:07

I'd like Marika, that's the Jacques Brel, because it's so French and I spent so long in France that um I just love it. Also it's very sad. I love sad songs. I realize that I've got a sort of heavyweight, sad element in my choice.

Speaker 412:22

I'm Marique, Marique, Monsieur Flamo.

Speaker 412:27

Coularditou.

Speaker 412:30

The police it come.

Speaker 412:32

I'm Marique, Marique, Monsieur Flamo.

Presenter12:52

Jacques Ferr singing Marique.

Presenter12:54

Tell me now, Prue, about this first catering company I mentioned in in Earl's Court. It was in the bedsitter, yes? Yes, it was. I don't think it was anything dignified with the name of a company, but it was certainly me catering out of a bed sitter.

Presenter13:06

I was very lucky because my landlady had no sense of smell, so she had no idea what you know, there were sort of cakes in the oven all day and so forth. And I I mean, I I don't think that environmental health officers would have liked it much, but I used to

Presenter13:20

used the communal bathroom to wash all the lettuces in and there were lobsters on the dressing table and it was um not how a coaching company should operate. Who are you cooking for then?

Presenter13:33

When I was working for a firm solicitors called McKenna and Company, in the day doing um lunches in Whitehall, and I used to do that three days a week. And then gradually I built up, like most little catering companies,

Presenter13:44

I do the chairman's daughter's cocktail party or somebody's dinner party, and I used to go round on the tube.

Presenter13:51

And, um, just cook people's dinners. Yes, yes. At fer I got a van in the end, but at first I used to go on the tube.

Prue Leith13:53

Mm-hmm.

Presenter13:58

I once got a very grand job when I had to cook a lunch that Princess Margaret was going to attend in the city.

Presenter14:05

A delivery company.

Presenter14:07

And I was so nervous I managed to leave all these live lobsters on the tube and I think they went all the way to Cockfosters and I arrived with no lobsters. So what sort of money were you charging then for a a a nice dinner? I used to charge three pounds. Wonderful just shows how old I am actually.

Prue Leith14:18

A nice dinner.

Presenter14:23

'Cause I spectate I was expensive even then.

Presenter14:26

But um I used to charge more for washing up because I hated washing up and I thought it concentrated my customers' minds wonderfully on the benefits of hiring a waitress and a washer up. Because if they ask the cook to cook and wait and wash up, something goes. And I would get so resentful, I'd sit in one o'clock in the morning waiting for them to finish their liqueurs and coffee. I think I could be home making meringues for tomorrow. So what sort of turnover would you have had a year? I know that I I turned over seven hundred and ninety nine pounds in my first year. And I lived. I mean that was the point. I paid four pounds a week rent for that bedsitter. And now my turn over about six million.

Prue Leith15:02

And now I can fit.

Presenter15:05

So but it's taken a long time, you know. People say, Business woman, how amazing you've done so much But I mean you think what Terence Conron did in one year, it's because I'm a woman people say it's brilliant.

Presenter15:16

Why do they say that?

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Well, because unusual for women to do anything.

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So or to do so much.

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I'm I'm credited with much more.

Presenter15:25

Than I deserve. If I was a man, nobody would take any notice. They'd say, Oh, yes, well that's another businessman. Do you think you had extraordinary or have extraordinary energy?

Presenter15:33

Yes, I do. I do think I have rather boringly too much energy. I think I'm quite a pain to the people I'm with, because I am very energetic.

Presenter15:40

And everybody always tips their hat to Lady Luck and said, You can't do it without luck. I think that is true, but you also can't do it without energy.

Presenter15:48

Your next record.

Presenter15:49

Well, my next record is really um harks back to those sixties days when I was building up the business. And I'm afraid it's Aquarius from Hare.

Speaker 416:00

Moon is in the seventh house, And Jupiter aligns with Mars.

Speaker 416:11

That peace will guide the planets And love will steer the stars This is the dawning of the age of agrarius

Prue Leith16:21

The darning of the angels are

Speaker 416:26

He shall be free.

Presenter16:30

VINCE EDWORD IN THE COMPANY OF HARE SINGING ACURIUS.

Presenter16:34

Then in nineteen sixty nine, Prue Leith, you opened your own restaurant, Leith's. Can you recall the first night? Did you have any customers? I certainly recall the first night. I had no voice at all, because whenever I'm really nervous and stress gets to me, my voice goes, It's my Achilles' heel is in my throat.

Presenter16:51

I had no voice. I spent that first night in the ladies' loo with a plunger unblocking it. My mother spent it in the dishwasher and washing up.

Presenter16:59

And our first customer was Lord Weymouth, you know, Alexander well, he's now Earl of Bath or something. And he was is still is the most eccentric chap, you know. And he came in

Presenter17:09

Very merry. And

Presenter17:11

I thought, We're off, we're made, it's terrific.

Presenter17:14

But I was disappointed at being arrested because I did think it was going to be glamorous, and actually it is more to do with unblocking loos and seeing that the light bulbs work and

Presenter17:23

You don't sort of swan around giving away brandies, which you think you're going to do.

Presenter17:27

What about your first reviews? Were they any good? No, the first review we had was from the Tatlap, Dennis Curtis. I remember it very well.

Presenter17:34

And it was incredibly unkind. By then I had become rather blase. People were saying w how wonderful our restaurant was, and it was packed night after night, and it was very fashionable and everything else. So when Tatla rang up and said, You're in,

Presenter17:47

I rushed out to buy it, thinking I was going to get another, you know, bouquet, and um it was quite rude. In fact, I could probably quote it to you line for line, because these knives go in, you know, and praise just r rolls off one because the nastiest thing he's in.

Prue Leith18:00

Mm-hmm.

Presenter18:03

Well, he said you had to wait forty-five minutes for an indifferent blanquette of lamb, and he also said that the

Presenter18:09

Soap in the ladies' loo resembled that

Presenter18:11

used to combat body odour in the fourteen, eighteen trenches.

Presenter18:16

I thought Wright's coal tar soap was rather smart. See, being South African, I didn't know what was smart and what wasn't.

Presenter18:23

And I thought that sounds very old fashioned English and traditional. Have you spent your life here then learning what is smart? I mean, has that been necessary? Well, I think being South African, I've never quite got it right, you know. I I think that I am an instinctive snob. I like things to be right and not to be offensive.

Presenter18:40

But being South African, the class thing has never I've never really understood it.

Presenter18:46

What is there that matters then to your um to your clients that you feel shouldn't matter to them or that you go out of your way to uh to make right for them because it matters so much?

Presenter18:57

Well, I mean I mean I suppose I'm fussy about all sorts of things, but I'm tremendously fussy, for example, on about the way letters are written and I like punctuation to be corre and I'm nitpicking about all that sort of stuff. And I also like napkins to be folded flat and

Presenter19:12

I don't like turnips carved into chrysanthemums and dipped into food dye, and I don't like radishes rolled into roses, and I don't like

Presenter19:20

artificial flowers and I don't like music and and all of this is a sort of snobbism. But I also don't like it. It's not that I want only smart people with smart money.

Presenter19:31

I mean, in our new sort of retail parks type operations.

Presenter19:36

I'm actually talking about

Presenter19:38

Coca-Cola and sandwiches and plastic trays and

Presenter19:42

But I still want people to have knees under the table and not to have to have disposable crockery and I still want it to be civilized, even if it's just a coke and an ice cream. I want it to be a civilized, pleasant experience. Some people would call all of that good taste, of course, not snobbery at all. Right, right. Thank you, Sue.

Presenter20:00

We were talking about opening the restaurant and and and getting it right. I mean, in that sense it is very theatrical, isn't it, as a thing to do. It's a performance, running a restaurant. Yes, it is. And but the interesting thing is that I thought that's what I liked most about it, was the mind host business. I mean if you're if you like cooking, one of the great attractions is the feeling of being Earth Mother providing for your friends and acquaintances and that you'll somehow have a sort of dream of me doling out.

Presenter20:28

um wonderful food to masses of people.

Presenter20:31

But and there is a sort of theatricality about a restaurant, the lighting and the atmosphere and and the the arrival and everything.

Presenter20:40

But in fact what I've found as I've got older is what I really like is the organisation. I mean I turn out to be rather hot stuff at organisation. Record number five.

Presenter20:50

Um record number five is Benjamin Britton's Serenade and um it's Peter Peirce.

Presenter20:56

Which I just love. I've only grown up into smart music very recently. I mean, I never knew anything about music, but I have a great friend in

Presenter21:03

in Canada, who gave me one of these.

Presenter21:06

um Sonny Walkman things for my noddle.

Presenter21:09

and sent me some decent tapes. And in the last five years I've suddenly discovered things like Beethoven and Mozart and Benjamin Britton, it's a whole new world.

Presenter21:18

I'm going to retire and know about music one day.

Speaker 421:26

The splendor holds on castle walls, And stories are retold in story.

Speaker 421:37

The Lord I shakes

Prue Leith21:38

I

Speaker 421:40

Cross the lakes, and the wise can come back the heats in glory.

Prue Leith21:43

The Lion's Pet

Speaker 421:50

Glow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying. Answer, echoes, answer.

Speaker 422:07

Die, die, die, die, die, die.

Speaker 422:17

Uh

Presenter22:22

Peter Pearce singing part of Benjamin Britton's serenade Opus Thirty One.

Presenter22:27

Tell me about your own kitchen, Prue. Can you describe it to me?

Presenter22:30

It's in a

Presenter22:32

Cotswold, um, old rectory that, um, we use for farm, for house, for everything.

Presenter22:38

And it's both an experimental kitchen. I use it for recipe testing and writing and all sorts of things.

Presenter22:45

And of course the children come into it and it's big and it's it's a sort of romantic

Presenter22:50

I mean, I make more shepherd's pie there than I make smart Canel de Brochet and so on. I do a lot of old-fashioned jamming and and bottling and So you've never got bored with all of that, with real cooking? No, I love real cooking. And um in fact, I actually think that cooking is some kind of therapy for me. If I don't cook, I become very bad-tempered and irritable.

Prue Leith23:00

Real cooking.

Presenter23:10

And you know, like, my mother often says to me, What you need is an hour in the kitchen. Like other people say, What you need is a good sleep, or what you need is a walk in this

Presenter23:18

I mean the fresh air. What I need is to go back and bake some bread and take out the aggression on a pile of dough. And um do you what do you cook on?

Presenter23:26

Well, I cook on gas and an old-fashioned agar.

Presenter23:30

and electricity, because that's the point about the test kitchen thing, is it does have a lot of kit. I realized that I must cook by smell because when we first moved into the country and I had um this aga, I would put cakes into the oven and burn them because you can't smell a thing.

Presenter23:47

Inside those big heavy oven doors.

Presenter23:49

And so unless you time it, you um burn everything.

Presenter23:52

But um now I've got better at it. So obviously with all this this testing and experimenting, you you obviously give dinner parties'cause you try it out on people. What about people inviting you? I would imagine they're terribly wary. People always say that, but I think anybody who knows me at all well will know that I'm so greedy that as long as somebody else spoils the egg oh I mean I'm I'm delighted with it. I

Prue Leith23:59

Duh.

Presenter24:12

I think most cooks just love to other people to cook for them. And um doesn't matter what. I mean I'm a very good guest. I've hardly ever been known not to have two helpings. Sounds like a plea. Yes, please. And then outside this Cotswold farmhouse rectory is a garden where you grow lots of vegetables and herbs for your restaurants. Yes, that's right. We grow actually less vegetables than we used to because you can now buy all sorts of smart little re vegetables in every supermarket. But we do grow lots of herbs and flowers for the businesses.

Presenter24:41

And we have greenhouses to grow pot plants and things like that. Let's have your record number six.

Presenter24:46

Ah, well my record number six is from Oklahoma, and it's poor Judd is dead. It reminds me of my childhood because it was one of the few records that we had, and there was great excitement because it seemed to represent

Presenter24:58

England and sophistication in America and things we'd never heard of because my parents went to the first night of Oklahoma and brought the record back. So that was it was very important.

Speaker 425:09

Poor John is dead, poor John Pry is dead, All gather round his coffin now and cry

Speaker 425:23

He had a heart of gold, and he wasn't very old.

Speaker 425:30

Oh why did such a pillar happen?

Presenter25:36

Howard Keel and Henry Clark singing Poor Judd Is Dead from Oklahoma.

Presenter25:41

I described you, Prue, in the beginning as a as a professional cook, but really it becomes very obvious that you're much more than that. You're a you're a businesswoman, really, aren't you, overseeing all the you're you're the managing director of it all, yes? Yes, I am, yes. My husband is the chairman. How does that work with a husband as a chairman? That's not easy, I would have thought. It is, it's very easy. I can never understand when people say never take your troubles home. I mean, I would say the first thing you must do is take your troubles home. And if you don't have to take them very far, because his office is next door to you, it's it's fine. I don't find it a problem at all. And what do you like to work for? Do you think you're difficult?

Speaker 425:51

Is that

Presenter26:13

I think I am difficult. I remember once w walking down to my restaurant down the alley.

Presenter26:20

and hearing one of the waiters saying,

Presenter26:23

Nerd la Patron.

Presenter26:24

which um is very rude, as you know, as they put their cigarettes out behind their backs, you know, sort of that feeling of she here she comes, the policewoman.

Prue Leith26:26

Do you know?

Presenter26:32

I'm

Presenter26:33

I hope I'm not unreasonable to work for, but I certainly know that my job is mostly to do with policing.

Presenter26:39

And I have to steal myself when people are doing a terrific job and doing wonderful things to raise the things that are not wonderful.

Presenter26:49

No, um fortunately I don't have to do very much of that.

Presenter26:53

But I'm not. The first person I ever sacked is engraved on my heart because I think that your first sacking is as traumatic, you know, it's the awful thing like this hurts me as much as it hurts you. It's actually just about as traumatic for the sacker as the sake, which can't really be true, but I suppose I certainly felt it badly. I had to get rid of a girl who had work worked for me when I was still just starting the business. She was almost my first employee.

Presenter27:16

And um some friend of mine said, What you have to do is you say

Presenter27:20

I'm terribly sorry, Jill. I have to let you go. And you just say this, and that lets her off nicely and so on.

Presenter27:26

And so I rehearsed this as she came up the stairs. I thought, Jill, I'm terribly sorry I have to let you go, Jill.

Presenter27:31

And when she got up there, I said, Jill, you're sacked. And I burst into tears and she burst into tears.

Presenter27:37

And I'm not good at it. I'm still not good.

Presenter27:39

Terrible. What about your children? You have two, Daniel and Lida, both in their mid teens. Are they going to come into the business?

Prue Leith27:45

That's how it's going to be.

Presenter27:46

I don't think so. Lida just might. She's very keen on cooking and she's a bit greedy like me. Daniel is far too squeamish. I mean, he can't he he's a great carnivore. No objection to eating chicken, but he cannot watch them being jointed or cut up or you keep talking about being greedy and loving your food. I mean, we have to tell people that you are not in the least fat. Are you on a constant diet? Pretty well. Pretty well. I mean, live. I've just been on holiday and I spent seven weeks not drinking at all and dieting solidly to lose three quarters of a stone. And I put the whole three quarters of a stone back in the two weeks of holiday, so.

Prue Leith28:04

Oh the

Presenter28:18

Well, it doesn't chef. Thank you. Record number seven.

Presenter28:22

Record number seven, I fell for when I was in Paris, and I'm afraid it's a bit of a cliche, but anybody who's lived in Paris has to have Edith Pieff's Milord engraved on their hearts.

Speaker 428:33

Hare bones, miles, mousa veil d'Amou, Lesse vous.

Presenter28:54

Edith Piaf singing Me Lord.

Speaker 328:54

Easy.

Presenter28:57

We've got all this way through without mentioning the uncurling of the British Rail sandwich. That was quite a feat, wasn't it? Well, no, it wasn't really, because the the British Rail were energetic and marvellous to work for and

Presenter29:10

And um I got so enthusiastic about the idea of fixing popular catering and I mean I don't think it's fixed yet, but it was fun working for British Rail. It's very interesting though that you haven't remained as so many uh private restaurateurs do with your head down as it were running your own business. There's a certain public spiritedness about your approach, isn't there? I do find that I l enjoy lobbying and pushing and I like getting my own way is the long and short of it. And so if I'm put on some committee I tend to be energetic about it and

Presenter29:38

Bully in a shelf.

Presenter29:39

And you've bullied and shoved your own business into six million turnover, as we were hearing earlier on. Which is let me ask a cheeky question, which is the most profitable arm of the business?

Presenter29:48

Well, the catering company, but that I think probably the um Queen Elizabeth

Presenter29:53

The Second Conference Centre in Westminster is the biggest of our contracts, and they're wonderful people to work for.

Presenter30:00

And I suppose too I ought to say that that the six million tennis sounds as if I did it, you know, and and the fact is that I sit here on Desert Island Discs getting all the glory, and out there there are hundreds of people who work fantastically hard, and it's I reckon if I'm good at anything, I'm good at picking.

Presenter30:17

Managers.

Presenter30:18

And I like them all. I never work with people I don't like. I think it's the first rule of business never hire anybody you don't like. And if you like them and you get on with them.

Presenter30:27

Um, they overwork like anything, and you get the glory. Seems a good system.

Presenter30:32

You're obviously quite a gregarious person. Are you going to go mad on the desert island for want of company, or will you survive the loneliness? Um, no, I am very gregarious. I might go mad, but then I was thinking that I might just I'm so organized that I would be sort of slapping the mosquitoes into line very quickly. I mean, I would find it difficult being alone, but I would organise myself very smartly.

Prue Leith30:46

And video.

Presenter30:53

You're essentially an optimist as well. I think that comes across quite quite strongly. But I have the impression, nevertheless, that life has treated you well, would you say? Terribly well. Terribly well. I do always feel that there should be a sword of Damocles poised over my head, because I have been lucky. I've got terrific family and marvellous guys, mm-hmm.

Presenter31:14

and the business works and I live in England. I mean, who could want anything more?

Presenter31:18

Well, you're getting more'cause you're getting sent away to the desert island with your last record. What shall that be?

Presenter31:24

Well, it's more grown-up music. Um I thought Beethoven Symphony No. Six.

Presenter32:22

Part of the final movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. Six, the Pastrel, played by the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Herbert von Karian.

Presenter32:30

Now, Prue, you've got to choose one of those records that you're going to hang on to if all the others get washed away. I'll have a bait home.

Presenter32:37

Grown-up stuff. Grown-up stuff. Lie in my hammock and listen to it and think of the green fields of England. Be good.

Presenter32:42

And a book. You've got Shakespeare and you've got the Bible. Well, I've got to have Trollope. I mean, I'll have the collected works of Trollope. Oh, right. Then I'll have the Barchester novels. Can I get them into one book?

Prue Leith32:48

Probably not.

Prue Leith32:51

I'll give

Presenter32:54

But I think one of the great things about Trollope is that because my mind is going because I'm over fifty now, I forget everything. So when I've read m my way to the last page I can start again, and um I'd ought to be just all fresh and new. In fact, I rather resent any new books at all, because I like Trollope so much.

Presenter33:10

And a luxury, what would you like?

Presenter33:13

Can I have a large bottle of fizz?

Presenter33:16

Certainly you can. You could have a a very large bottle. What's the biggest one called?

Speaker 433:19

Yeah.

Prue Leith33:19

Tell the round.

Presenter33:20

Oh, I don't know, Jeroboam or something. Jeroboam.

Prue Leith33:22

Terrible

Presenter33:23

A Jerry Bohemo champagne. Any particular brand? On Perignon, please. Why not?

Prue Leith33:23

Yeah.

Prue Leith33:24

Yeah.

Prue Leith33:25

A donkey.

Presenter33:28

Prouli, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you.

Prue Leith33:40

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.