Prue Leith recalls lobster disaster while cooking for Princess Margaret

‘I’d never seen a lobster in my life’, she revealed

Dame Prue Leith has recalled her disastrous attempt to cook a lobster for Princess Margaret.

The Great British Bake Off judge discussed the culinary nightmare during Tuesday’s (20 December) episode of Lorraine on ITV.

She began: “When I'd just started cookery school, I'd never seen a lobster in my life and I was asked to cook lobster for Princess Margaret.

“Faced with the lobsters, I got a knife, and in walks a butler who says, ‘What are you doing?!’

“And he said, ‘You dimwit, they're dead already, they've been boiled.’ And I didn't know that they're black when they're alive and red when they're dead,” she admitted.

“If you're going to kill a lobster, the quickest way to do it is to stab it in the head,” she added.

Her embarrassing kitchen revelation comes as the 82-year-old was told she was “too old” to apply to be a crossbench peer.

In a Times radio interview set to be broadcast this morning, the veteran food writer said: “Would I go to the House of Lords? Yeah, I’d go like a shot. But I know they wouldn’t have me.

Prue Leith has a new cookbook out (Geoff Pugh/PA)

“Many, many years ago, I was asked by both the Tory [and] the Labour Party if I would take their whip. I said no and so I thought if two grandees from both of these parties think I would be useful in the House of Lords, I would love to do that, because I am an interfering bossy woman – I like to get my oar into everything.

“I realised what I wanted to be was a crossbencher, so I would be independent. And so I applied but I never got in. They sent me a nice letter to say, ‘You’re just the sort [of person] we’d like in the House of Lords but we don’t have space for you at the moment. So your application is in a drawer.’

“And then when I turned 70, I had a letter from them saying, ‘You can forget it now because you’re over 70.’”

As well as spending three years as chairwoman of the School Food Trust, Leith also advised Boris Johnson on improving hospital meals.

In June 2021, the South Africa-born restaurateur was made a dame in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.

Leith said she was “thrilled, delighted and very grateful” for the honour.