Prue Leith Had a 13-Year Long Affair
The British Bake Off lady, Prue Leith, reveals that she had a 13-year-long affair with a man who eventually became her husband.
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Hi Chump Lady,
I don’t know how familiar Americans are with the Great British Bake Off but Prue Leith was one of the judges until last year and always comes across quite sympathetically. She has fallen completely in my estimation after reading this article and watching the interview: The cooking legend tells the remarkable story of her lengthy secret liaison to Davina McCall on her Begin Again podcast.
Then to read some of the comments elsewhere ‘the heart wants what the heart wants’ etc. just makes me want to slap someone.
The behaviour was so awful I’m surprised she is willing to talk about it at all.
I guess she has no shame. Is this material for the UBT? Some Chumplady snark? Thank you for all you do to keep us chumps sane.
Janie
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Dear Janie,
I think Prue Leith rightly judged that she could talk about her long affair and no one would be bothered. As she was at pains to point out, hey, even the chumped wife in question wasn’t bothered! She was a munificent and all-forgiving chump. Which is exactly how central casting likes their chumps. (In contrast to the villainous crazy and controlling chump.)
I give Leith some credit for her fig leaf of performative shame.
“I can’t justify any of it.”
Prue Leith
You don’t have to justify it, Prue. An adoring public is happy to perform that service.
She realizes her story might give some people the ick, and she heads that right off at the pass. But OMG what ick there is.
I answered this letter not to vilify Prue Leith, because hey, she’s a lady in her 80s defending the world against soggy bottom crusts — but to point out that affair partners aren’t enviable. They’re messed up.
Woman and Home magazine reports:
Prue Leith is well known for her candour, and speaks out about important topics including intimacy in later life and finding love again over the age of 70.
She’s often spoken about her first husband, writer Rayne Kruger, and how she didn’t expect to find happiness again after his death.
However, she’s been equally open about her joy and experiences of second marriage to new husband, John Playfair.
Well, I’m glad that one didn’t begin with a 13-year affair.
Prue has now shared incredible insight into the 13-year affair she had with her first husband, and the unexpected fallout when his wife found out.
Speaking on Begin Again with Davina McCall, Prue explains that she’d known Rayne since she was a child, as he was the husband of her mother’s best friend, Nan.
Daddy issues anyone?
The chump wife in question was your MOTHER’S BEST FRIEND? Known him since she “was a child?” The first husband sounds like a predator. How on earth does this pass for romance? She’s from South Africa, a place not known for its progressiveness in the last century. But TODAY? This passes for romance TODAY?
Prue’s family lived in South Africa when she was young, and when she visited England without them as a girl, Rayne and his wife cared for her and Prue was best friends with their daughter.
Rayne had married Nan at 24 and she was 44 – she’d lost her first husband in the war and had three small children when she and Rayne got together.
Hello misogyny my old friend.
Well of course he had to cheat for younger snatch. The woman was 16 years OLDER. You know where my mind went? The first wife was a vulnerable war widow with children. And this guy later has a romance with a child friend of his contemporaries. Circumstantially this does not look great.
“This whole thing will sound so revolting to anybody moral backbone and I can’t justify any of it,” Prue says honestly, as she shares the story of how their romance began to Davina.
Thank you, Prue. Yes, it does sound revolting.
Speaking about Rayne, she continues, “For me he was like a godfather and a surrogate father, and then my father died when I was 21.”
WTF? This is so utterly messed up. Prue, “Oh, he was like a father to me” is not the explanation you think it is. The mind goes to very dark places.
Prue’s mother later blamed the affair on the fact her father had died when she was young, insinuating she was searching for a surrogate father.
NO, BLAME THE MAN CREEPING ON YOUR DAUGHTER.
Do I have to point out the obvious: We do NOT f**K our FATHERS. Searching for a surrogate father means you want a mentor, a coach, a responsible adult in your life. It doesn’t mean BOYFRIEND.
Prue shares that she “loved and respected” Rayne, but wasn’t sure of his feelings until she was 21 and “we were listening to some music and he just came over and kissed me.”
Is anyone buying the story that he waited until she was 21 to chastely kiss?
At the time, Prue “didn’t want a husband” as she focussed on her career, so she and Rayne had a secret affair for 13 years.
WHY ARE WE PASSING THIS OFF AS ROMANCE?
Also, ICK. Also, WTF Prue? There were no available men to date in all of South Africa? Why are you continuing a situationship with your parents’ pervy friend? This is some twisted spackle.
“It worked fine,” she reveals, adding, “We just didn’t tell anybody. And if I was ever seen out with him, it wouldn’t have been surprising because we were friends anyway and working together (Rayne helped her build her business.)
Sucking the dick of the patriarchy has benefits.
Then, yada yada, she wants to have a baby and Rayne, being the honorable cheater that he is, decides to tell his wife about the affair. Because she’s aged out as a wife appliance.
So the couple took the plunge and told Nan about the affair, so they could be together and have a family.
Nan was “devastated” and “betrayed,” but showed the couple incredible forgiveness. “She was an amazing woman, you know,” Prue recalls, sharing that Nan told her she’d always been warned that Rayne would leave her because of their 20-year age gap.
Yes, Nan, it’s your fault because you married a man with an age gap. It’s not the man’s fault — he couldn’t possibly have realized you were 20 years older. We can’t possibly hold him responsible for commitments he made. No, the proper response here for Nan, after her brief devastation, is to immediately pivot to “incredible forgiveness.”
The two families remained great friends despite the affair, and Prue eventually married Rayne two days before their son Daniel was born.
“She [Nan] used to come and stay with us in the country, and my children when they were little, were very confused. They grew up with my mother and Nan, but it was all fine,” Prue reveals.
Fine! Sh*t sandwiches for Nan! Of course Nan’s uterus is withered and dead, but who doesn’t want to come visit the offspring of her ex-husband? See how young and virile everyone is? You may be obsolete, but do enjoy your role as surrogate grandmother.
Okay guys, that’s all I can take.
This is some old-timey misogyny. The fact that it’s being dressed up today as Prue’s One Great Love and a “liaison” that turned into heteronormative family success is disgusting.
Davina concludes the conversation by saying to Prue of her first husband, But he was a big love?” to which she responds, “He was, he was an amazing man.”
Amazing.
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Ugh. Prue Leith is right in one respect: it’s unjustifiable.
What a vomitous and depressing story.
Just trying to get your week off to the right start.
😂☠️🤣
OMG. That’s one of the creepiest stories I’ve heard in a long time. That man was some kind of pervert. It’s shocking that everybody is saying how fabulous he is. Prue was adult when it started, and so she also shares the blame. But the dude. Ewwww.
Even though she claims she was 21, the power dynamics were such that he had enormous power over her as a father figure. She was literally cared for by him and Nan when she was a girl.
It’s SOOOO gross! He’s a creep and she got sucked in. They were not equal adult decisions.
Yeah, the fact that he was a father figure to her when she was a child really amps up the creepiness factor. There is no way in hell I could be attracted to somebody I was a babysitter for. Gross!
If she had said something like: “I was 21, very young and naive, he had groomed me and I had been heavily indoctrinated by patriarchy. I broke up with him as soon as I became a bit more mature and independent. However, I still look back with a sense of shame”, I might have been more willing to forgive her. However, I guess that becomes impossible after an affair of 13 years followed by a marriage that lasted several decades.
One can only hope he made her thoroughly miserable. But that’s unlikely, two peas in a pod. Yuck.
Ugh. There are so many of these entitled, duplicitous cretins. All coming out the woodwork for some reason. I wonder what decided Leith to finally spill her rancid and incestuous beans? The old bitch gives me the boak. May all her souffles fall flat. 👿
Old-timey misogyny is exactly what I was thinking reading this. My grandfather was a pastor and had affairs. It destroyed my grandmother, father and aunts in the process. Decades later, they are all still screwed up by the trauma from it. When I was in high school, my parents decided to take us back to my father’s old church, where grandpa was a former pastor for over 20 years. All of the oldies in the congregation still spoke glowingly about my grandpa. Like falling-over-pews-slap-happy adoration to come talk to my dad about how amazing our grandpa was and how they missed him.
It was awful for my dad, and we went back a few times before never going there again (maybe dad was pain shopping? maybe he just wanted to see if it would stop?).
That generation is different. Unless someone literally died or was jailed for a crime in the process, that generation often doesn’t see mental and emotional trauma. In fairness, that same generation did go through a world war and see a more literal side of pain and destruction during their formative years. But still, I just wish one of these older folks would have come over and given my dad the welcome grace that he needed while also dunking all over our FW grandpa. Maybe that did happen and we didn’t see it. For my dad, I hope it did.
I read that a while ago and felt as disgusted as I felt when a newish friend shared with me that she had had a 10 year affair with her child’s soccer coach. They even left their respective families and went on vacations together. Her lack of empathy for what I endured, being cheated on and painfully abandoned after 30 years didn’t seem to register. After I learned that, I could no longer be friends with her, not after what I endured. She didn’t even seem to have any remorse that their selfish actions destroyed two families. I have zero respect for people with such entitlement and lack of character.
Let me add that our age difference was one of the excuses my narc ex used, too, and it was only 7 years, not 20. And of course he knew that from the beginning. POS. He thought I’d be as accepting as poor Nan was. And that didn’t happen.
What even is that question after hearing all this? — “But he was a big love?” WTF?! Interviewer might as well have said, “Help me spackle this please.”
I cannot help but imagine this story as a skit performed for television by Monty Python. Eric Idle in drag as Nan, Carol Cleveland as Prue and John Cleese as the pervert Rayne. It all fit x perfectly into their skewering patriarchal British society.
I agree this is all so creepy, but I also think Nan was a creeper as much as her younger husband was a creeper on. I doubt Nan was at the poverty level.
I was divorced at 40, and men in their 20’s were not an option. There was an ick factor even then, long before internet, and open discussion about this stuff.
Just lots of ick all the way around.
This is next level messed up. Why on earth tell anyone this? If anything it should have been a cautionary tale ending with, “And it took years of therapy and hard work to understand how terrible this all was. I sought to make amends to Nan but I knew what I had done was unforgivable. I was led over many years to consider this normal and have worked every day since to make sure people understand that there was abuse and this was terrible all around. I am ashamed of my actions.” Being an old AP doesn’t get you off the hook. There is so much WRONG here to uncoil. Is this a weird bid for attention even now? Sheesh. Go retire. The world would like to forget about you and your disgusting first FW.
I’m a huge Bake Off fan, but damn this is hard to swallow! I feel absolutely terrible for Nan. How many shit sandwiches did she have to eat, especially in the aftermath of her divorce? Just awful.
Me too. But first Paul Hollywood —
from Wikipedia: Hollywood met his now-former wife Alexandra in Cyprus where he was a head baker at a five-star hotel and she was a scuba diving instructor.[33] They later married on the island.[34] They have a son.[35]
Hollywood separated from Alexandra in 2013 after having an affair with his The American Baking Competition co-judge Marcela Valladolid. They later reconciled, then separated again in November 2017[36][37][38][39] and divorced in July 2019.[40] In August 2019 Hollywood split from 23-year-old girlfriend Summer Monteys-Fullam, ending a two-year relationship.[41][42
The 23 yo was when he was in his 50s and he broke up with her a month after his divorce went through.
And now Prue Leith.
Yuck.
Yeah, I already knew Paul Hollywood was a POS. I just didn’t know Prue was too.
It’s just anecdotal but grimly interesting that every white woman I know who escaped Apartheid South Africa was raped as a child, typically by a family member. Except the women I have known didn’t “internalize” those toxic conditioning dynamics the way this Prue character seems to have.
I’m not even sure that, in such a violent society, this “conditioning” to accept creepery as normal even requires direct rape since the abuse of that violent society’s underdogs can act like “heads on pikes” lining castle bridge to warn everyone of what happens to resistors. In other words, it may only require seeing others being raped, repressed and enslaved to make some “grovel for amnesty” from the violent system by normalizing it and thereby lowering their own bars for what constitutes unconscionable dynamics.
In any case, it makes perfect sense from a political perspective that “isms” all congeal together so that the fascist racism of Apartheid at the time would naturally embolden the perviest sexism and increase rates of predation even within the families of the dominant caste. And this is reflected by known statistical data on rape and domestic violence under various violent dictatorships like Franco’s Spain, Nazi Germany, Pinochet’s Chile, the Argentine Military junta, Soviet Russia, etc.
This is one of the reasons I appreciate the films of Chilean writer-director Pablo Larrain: because all his early works focus heavily on that direct link between authoritarian repression and rape culture. This seems to be his takeaway from growing up under Pinochet. From his first film Fuga to Post Mortem, No, and The Club, Larrain seems to show that the reason piddling little plebes who probably have the most to lose from repressive regimes will still support them because the proverbial “rape” of culture performed by violent dictatorship provides cover for and facilitates actual rape and acts of sexual dominance so that piddling little rapists/abusers can finally let their freak flags fly high under those circumstances. I perceived some echoes of this in some of Larrain’s later films like Spencer and El Conde as well.
In any event, even if individuals like Prue are often products of early trauma, they don’t strike me as “survivors” but more like trauma “poltergeists” or zombies who lurch through life normalizing and facilitating the same kind of abuse that once likely burned out their deadened souls.
Sadly, a lot of this rings true for my own abusive birth family as well.
What strikes me is that the women who never stop siding with the abusers of their youth are often quite privileged, like Prue. I think she would have had many opportunities in her life to break free from him (much more than many other women who probably grew up under similar circumstances). Yet for some reason she chose… not to.
Yes, richer abusers have more tools of grooming, entrapment and retaliation at their disposal so it makes sense that the Pavlovian conditioning could be stronger in the “golden cage” types. But you’re right that, by adulthood, the option to either counter or facilitate evil is a choice.
I would love to know what the war widow’s three children have to say about their relationships with Rayne. Predators hunt where victims are thick on the ground. I doubt his stepchildren came away unscathed.
Donald William Gau did good things with his life, apparently.
https://www.bmj.com/content/326/7400/1217.2
His wife, Gillian, may also have been a physician.
Nan’s husband is listed:
Cullis William Gau [M twice] (1924-29) Lieut-Colonel, Royal Engineers. North Africa, 3 June 1944 (He was made a lieutenant in Feb 1940) I don’t know if the M twice means married twice or was awarded for meritorious service twice. He was born in 1909, died in 1944.
Her eldest, Donald, isn’t big on the internet and died in 2002/2003. He was a RAF Pilot in the 1950’s.
Her son John Gau became a pretty big fish in the BBC world and started his own production company. Long marriage, hopefully happy and NO CHEATING.
http://www.ex-bbc.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?num=1711910367/0
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/mar/14/john-gau-obituary
Her daughter, Angela, seems to have quietly disappeared.
I certainly hope they kept a wary distance from Prue and supported their mother, Nan.
You had me at soggy bottom “crusts”. 🤣
This is the most judgmental thing I’ve read on the internet in a long time. I have my own FW and he’s still with his AP 3 years after our divorce. That’s my story, my judgement. Others put their own stories out there to be talked about and judged. I don’t know why you or this group are so quick to judge others. Every situation is different. Cheating is always wrong but he who is without sin …
You’re judging the need to judge.
Most judgemental thing on the internet? Do you not delve into social media replies much or at all? lol. Nope, cheaters are cheaters, plain & simple. Just like rape is always rape, not “rapey”. I want to believe you’re a chump but you’re giving off strong cheater vibes instead.
Wait, what!? It’s judgmental to note that a older married man, entrusted with the care of his daughter’s friend, instead made a move on her? And kept it secret for 13 years from his family? “Cheating is always wrong,” but … if we call it out we’re judgmental?? I’m not following this logic at all.
You know the old joke about Jesus at the temple of Jerusalem saying ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” just as a rock goes flying by his head and he yells, “Mom!” Well, that’s chumps in this specific circumstance. We are without that particular sin (and many of the other serious sins that typically come in tow with such as financial abuse, rape by deception, coercive control, traumatization of children, pathological lying, etc., etc.) and reserve the right to pitch proverbial rocks at the people who do this sh*t.
I think the exceptions might be, say, a vulnerable minor groomed by a married predator, a struggling immigrant forced to bang a married boss to keep from losing a work permit and being deported, someone who escapes an abuser in a country that doesn’t allow women to divorce or a western victim of domestic violence who gets romantically involved with someone before the previous dangerous relationship is officially over if just to have a bodyguard on hand as she makes her harrowing escape. But every other cheater is fair game.
You said, “Others put their own stories out there to be talked about and judged.” And so we are.
This argument that it’s wrong to judge people is just absurd. OF COURSE, we judge people every day. We have to. Is that car going to stop at the stop sign? Do I trust this plumber? This babysitter? This doctor? For those who date, do I trust this person is not a serial killer so we can go to each other’s houses? That person walking behind me in the parking lot is giving me the creeps. Judge, judge, judge.
And yes, we talk about it. It has been theorized that humans developed language because we needed to “gossip” to know who to trust in our little bands to watch our children for us and to share food with.
Judging the character of anybody in our lives is job #1. And it’s always the people who have the worst behavior that scream “Don’t judge me!” like it is an affront to planet earth.
Well, not without sin but definitely without cheating. The whole story is quite appalling, especially the old bast*rd.
Thunk! That’s me, LesVarn, throwing the first stone, but probably not the last. Because why should cheating be immune from judgment? People judge things all day, every day. And a man who initiates an affair with his daughter’s friend, a girl for whom he was a kind of surrogate father, who along with his wife took care of her when she was a child…deserves judgment. Ditto for his destruction of his wife’s heart, as unbothered as an Aztec priest as she crumples at his feet. The whole story: creepy as hell.
This one hurts. British Baking Show was my happy/safe place when life was dark. The opening notes of the theme song instantly fill me with comfort and joy. I’ll still watch and love it, but it won’t be the same. Everyone knows Paul is an FW idiot, but Prue?!
I agree with other commenters that within the context of the times, her age/situation in the relationship, and the cultural and moral corruption at the core of white apartheid South Africa, Prue was a victim herself at one point. But to allow it to carry on for as long as she did, without a reckoning? And now, to openly talk about her story in the way she does? No excuse.
Carries the usual tone of ‘oh well it worked out for ME so it’s all good’ that people like her tend to lead with.
Typically lacks the common sense to feel even a vague shame at devastating a woman she knows and then rubbing it in her face for years.
Classy, Prue- real classy.
Ugh. Just yuck. No matter what terrible things happen to you, you do not get a pass to do terrible things to others. And an extra comment here, from one of the Silver Chumps, as we who are in our 70s and beyond know….one doesn’t need a man to have a good, full, rich life. Many of us do not hate men, but prefer to live solo, go where we please, when we please, and not have to care for an aging man. I have no interest in that, yet I have male friends I see at classes, events, religious services, etc. We exchange pleasantries, perhaps catch up on families, etc. But partners or dating? No thanks. Ladies, men need not be central to your lives!
The great old days! Great old sluts of both genders!
She was a victim and she is processing it, finally, in her eighties. A horrible story and I feel great compassion for her. That was not an “affair”, that was abuse.
The ick factor! I sincerely hope ANGELA dropped Prue like a plaster of Paris enema.
https://www.dailymail.com/lifestyle/article-4934778/Prue-Leith-s-13-year-affair-husband-mum-s-friend.html
“Nan’s daughter Angela was my best friend and Rayne used to carry us around on his shoulders. He held even seven-year-old me in thrall; he was a terrific listener and very good with young people.”
Oh, I BET he was good with young people.
“They were a fascinating, intelligent, generous and loving family. Their sons Donald, a doctor, and John, who worked for the BBC, were no longer at home, while Angela was at Rada during the day and often out with friends at night. Nan, a successful actress, was usually at the theatre. So I saw more of Rayne than any of the others.”
Proximity made me do it! *gags*
“Her sons were naturally outraged and Ange said she had put Rayne on a pedestal, but now realised he had feet of clay.”
I have a feeling neither Prue nor Rayne ever told Nan or his stepchildren exactly how long they were involved.
What a nasty piece of work.
Oh my gosh I just read that full article and she had also gone off with another married man, Jake!
Ohh it’s just so sad… the trauma to Nan and Jake’s wife and family. She writes it like it was a fairytale romance… well the flip side of her version of events is the living hell version. Ohh it just makes me feel sick, that she can write it seemingly so flippantly.
Buck toothed octogenarian cheater who looks like a nice older senior citizen at a casual glance. Referring to both prue and FW ex-FIL