- Have YOU got a story? Email tips@dailymail.com
Prue Leith has confessed she’s added some spice to her sex life with the help of testosterone gel as she opened up about her marriage to husband John Playfair.
The Bake Off star, 86, sat down for a very candid chat with Saga Magazine and explained how she introduced the gel in addition to to oestrogen patches and progesterone pills.
‘It’s great for libido. You feel better and younger,’ she told the publication.
Prue explained how she swears by the gel as well as HRT, insisting the medication and supplements help keep her in great health.
‘I asked a doctor, “What’s normal [concerning sex in older couples]?” She said there are no studies, because it’s just imagined people my age don’t,’ she told the magazine.
‘I don’t think I’d be active in every sense without hormone replacement therapy. When people ask, “How do you look so young? How are you still working?” Well, that’s the secret.’
She’s such a fan of HRT that she refuses to come off it, insisting ‘I always say, “Why?” HRT has an increased risk of breast cancer, but it’s tiny and if I came off it now, I’d go through menopause symptoms at 86, which would be horrendous.’
‘HRT must save the NHS money. It prevents acute depression, heart disease, strokes, but there’s a puritan thing where they think it’s wicked to make yourself younger than you are.’
Prue and fashion designer John, 78, married in 2016 during a ceremony in Scotland, after first crossing paths in 2011.
Last year Prue and John shared the details of the start of their relationship in a sweet moment during their joint appearance on Loose Women.
The chef, who was married to her first husband nearly 30 years before his death in 2002, reveals she bolted from their first meeting at a dinner party.
Prue told how she was invited to a dinner party at a friend’s house, but when she got there were two men and two women there, leaving her feeling like a gooseberry.
The TV personality said she made her excuses to leave her friend’s dinner as quickly as she could and didn’t anticipate what would happen next.
Prue revealed that the following day, John turned up on her doorstep as he admitted he instantly ‘knew she was the one’.
Prue announced she was stepping back from Bake Off in January and it has since been confirmed Nigella Lawson will take her place, and will join co-judge Paul Hollywood when the new series begins filming in April.
The TV chef, who replaced former show judge Mary Berry in 2017, explained her departure in an interview with The Spectator. She said: ‘I have been dithering for years about when to stop judging The Great British Bake Off.
‘When I joined nine years ago, I thought, since I was in my mid-seventies, that I’d be lucky to manage two years.
‘At that age, my mother was deaf as a post and away with the fairies, believing her son was her father and that her cat was the one she’d had 40 years before.
‘But my marbles stayed more or less in place and there seemed no good reason to give up a job I loved.
‘Finally, though, the desire to work less and play more got to me. Bake Off and its offshoots such as The Great American Baking Show and even the Christmas specials are all filmed in the summer, which has meant I could never have a summer holiday.’
Prue explained that a recent getaway to Madagascar was what finally convinced her that it was time to move on.
‘I suddenly realised that if I don’t give up Bake Off, I’ll never again have a holiday in the south of France, in Italy, in Spain, or even in Cornwall or Scotland,’ she said.