Former Great British Baking Show judge Prue Leith is dishing on her storied career in her new book Being Old…and Learning to Love It!, and in the memoir, she also opened up on some of her embarrassing encounters with the Royal Family.
“I actually think there's something about the Royal Family, they jinx things,” Leith told People. The TV personality and chef noted that emotions run high when it comes to royal events—and that tends to lead to catering catastrophes.
“Because I think what happens is people get quite overexcited at the thought of them and then everything seems to go wrong,” Leith added. “You talk to any caterer and they'll tell you drama stories about the royals.”
One of her most awkward encounters involved Queen Elizabeth and a botched cup of tea.
Leith previously shared the story in a 2024 Instagram Reel, detailing the time when she was tasked with serving tea to the late Queen at the 1986 opening of London’s Queen Elizabeth Centre.
Instead of delivering the strong black tea Queen Elizabeth preferred, the Great British Baking Show alumna gave her “weak lemony tea” after the palace refused to confirm how the monarch liked hers made.
“Personally, the thing that upset me most was not giving The Queen a decent cup of tea, because I much admired The Queen and I thought, 'Poor bloody woman. She's been walking around this extremely boring building for two hours…By the time she got to me, she must have been absolutely panting for a cup of tea, and I failed completely.’”
However, Leith called the time Princess Margaret visited her London restaurant, Leith's, in the 1960s “the worst.”
In the book, Leith reveals that she stood on Princess Margaret’s toe and her “snobbish head waiter” wouldn’t serve Margaret the venison casserole she asked for at the time.
Recalling the disaster, Leith told People she “had a quarrel with a head waiter, who didn't want to give the princess what she wanted. He said, 'I will not serve stew to a princess.' I said, 'Why did I ever hire this guy? He's terrible.’”
On top of the awkward incident, the waiter caught on fire while refilling a flame lamp in the kitchen, and Leith said “the restaurant was empty, I had to marshal waiters to try and look like customers, try and look like what looked like sophisticated, smart customers. The waiters were all clicking their fingers at their colleagues, who weren't actually being waiters.”
