Toast with the most

Prue Leith tells LAUREN TAYLOR about her new book, which celebrates the humblest of snacks

- LAUREN TAYLOR

DAME Prue Leith may be TV royalty now, but one thing she says she'll "take to her grave" is the shame of making the late Queen Elizabeth II a bad cup of tea.

"I couldn't get out of the Palace how she liked her tea, so I ended up with a tray with all these options on it: silver teapots, a jug, bowls of lemon and different sugars, milk and cream," says the Great British Bake Off star.

It was 1975 at the opening of the Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre in London. The Queen finally reached Prue.

"I said, 'Black or white Ma'am?' She said black, so I put a piece of lemon in. She said, 'No lemon, so I had to fish the lemon out as I hadn't got another cup," the 82-year-old recalls.

"Then I topped up her tea with water because most people who have black tea like it quite weak, and she said, 'I like it strong!

"So the poor woman got weak lemony tea when she likes strong black tea. I'll go to my grave ashamed of it!"

These days of course, South African-born Prue is in her sixth series of Channel 4's Great British Bake Off alongside Paul Hollywood, Matt Lucas and Noel Fielding, and has just published her latest cookbook, Bliss On Toast.

But the controversy garnered by some of the Bake Off episodes centring on cuisines of other countries, like the recent 'Mexico week, has taken her by surprise.

"What we're trying to do is celebrate other people's cuisines, but we've only got three challenges, so obviously we're not going to cover all the things that any country would want you to cover," she says.