Great British Bake Off's Prue Leith Recalls 13-Year Affair With Husband of Her Mom's Best Friend

Prue Leith is reflecting on past confessions she may have left under-proofed. 

More than a decade after the longtime Great British Bake Off judge revealed her affair with Rayne Kruger—who was the husband of her mother's best friend Nan Munro—in her 2012 memoir Relish: My Life on a Plate, Prue is sharing why she decided to go public with the story.

"I thought a lot about this and I thought, should I put everything in? Or shall I be discrete and careful?" she said on the May 5 episode of Kate Thornton's podcast White Wine Question Time. "And I decided that the rule should be, if it's interesting it should go in. If it's boring it shouldn't."

Prue and Rayne's affair went on for 13 years before they married in 1974.

 

"If there are things in your life you're not exactly proud of, but they would be interesting to the reader, you should try to tackle them," the 83-year-old continued. "So I did write about a long affair I had with my husband before we married and he was married at the time to somebody else, to a wonderful woman."

Rayne, who was 20 years Prue's senior, acted as a mentor to her and was the chairman of her company during their extramarital relationship. Prue credits this as a large reason as to why the two were able to keep their affair a secret for so long. 

"It was easier, in a way, because he was a family friend and he was the chairman of my company," Prue explained. "Everybody knew that we were great friends and that he was my mentor because he was 20 years older than me." 

And as to why Prue never asked Rayne to leave his wife? "Because I was very happy," she continued. "I was building my business. I had none of the duties of a wife, and I had all the pleasures of somebody who loved me. I wasn't pressing for marriage." 

But after 13 years of secrecy, Prue said she turned 34 and, as she thinks happens to many women, "you suddenly want a baby so badly."

"At that point I thought, I've got to leave Rayne because he's not going to leave Nan," Prue explained. "I left him and I left him by the simple expedient of running away with somebody who said he was in love with me, and I thought, 'That'll do.'"

And run away she did, going on to explain that she and the unnamed man traveled throughout Austria, Egypt and "wherever place" for about a month.

And while Prue admits that she and her mystery lover soon realized running away was a mistake, it helped Rayne realize that the only reason his marriage to Nan worked was because of his affair with Prue.  

As Prue shared on the podcast, she got a call from Rayne saying that he'd left Nan while she was in Tel Aviv: "He rang me up and said, 'Come home. We'll have a baby. I can't live without you.'" 

It was true. They wed in 1974, just months after welcoming son Danny. They also adopted a daughter, Li-Da Kruger, and were together until Rayne's death in 2002. 

In 2016, Prue married John Playfair, a retired clothes designer. 

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