Prue Leith has opened up about having a secret 13-year affair with her mother’s best friend’s husband, who she later went on to marry.
The Great British Bake Off judge got candid during a recent appearance on the White Wine Question Time podcast, where she spoke of her decision to first reveal details of the clandestine relationship in her 2012 autobiography Relish.
Prue told host Kate Thornton she initially hesitated if she should “put everything in” the book, but ultimately decided that “if it’s interesting it should go in, if it’s boring it shouldn’t”.
In her memoir, Prue disclosed that she met her late husband Rayne Kruger while he was married to South African actor Nan Munro, who Rayne had three children with before marrying Prue in 1974.
Speaking of her decision to reveal the affair, Prue reflected: “I thought, ‘You know, to skip it when Rayne was the most important person in my life… How could I not tell his whole story?’ So I did.”
While they were conducting the secret relationship, Prue said that she “wasn’t pressing for marriage” or asked him to leave his wife, because she was “very happy” with how things were between them.
She said: “I had none of the duties of life and all of the pleasures of somebody who loved me,” she recalled. “I wasn’t pressing for marriage.
“We did have 13 secret years and nobody ever guessed because we were discreet,” she said, adding that they would not “go out to dinner or anything that would create any kind of suspicion”.
When the affair did come out and Prue and Rayne went on to marry, his ex-wife Nan went on to forgive the pair, with Prue calling her “an extraordinary woman”.
Prue said: “I remember one of her really famous actress friends said to her, ‘How can you go and have weekends and stay with Prue and Rayne? That woman, she’s a witch, she stole your husband’.
“And Nan said, ‘Are you going to have me every weekend? Shall I come to you instead?’ She said, ‘They are my friends, I love them. Yes, it’s been hard, but Prue’s still Prue’. She was amazingly forgiving. And an extraordinary woman.”
Prue was married to Rayne from 1974 until his death in 2002, and the couple had two children together, including Tory MP Danny Kruger.
The South African-born star, who moved to the UK at the age of 20, has since remarried, tying the knot to John Playfair in 2016.