PRUE LEITH

The restaurateur and Great British Bake Off host talks splurging on style and why a pub dinner is her choice for a luxury night out

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Dame Prue Leith is best known these days for her quick wit and critical eye on The Great British Bake Off, but she has been in the restaurant business since 1969. Originally born in South Africa, she moved to London at 20 to study at the prestigious Cordon Bleu cookery school before opening Leith’s, her Michelin-starred restaurant in Notting Hill. Last month, she celebrated the official unveiling of Fortnum & Mason’s Bicester Village store, as she now lives in the Cotswolds with her husband, John Playfair.

Luxury is anything that is unusual and a pleasure. A day to myself with no plans in the diary feels like a luxury to me. Nowadays a luxury night out is a good, old-fashioned pub dinner with my husband. I would order ham, egg and chips. Or, if we were in London, an evening at Bentley's Oyster Bar on Swallow Street.