How I fell in love once more at 70, by PRUE LEITH. Agonising over texts. An odd stirring in your tummy. Moments of tension – and euphoria. Now learn her splendidly unabashed new memoir

Falling in love at 70 is the same as at 17: the same, strange stirring in your diaphragm, your heart rate up, the same euphoria and anxiety, even panic. Same anguish too: can I text him again? Will he ring?

It wasn’t love at first sight when I met my husband John 15 years ago. It should have been, but I wasn’t concentrating. I had shared a car back to the Cotswolds with a woman who was anxious to be dropped first because she was due at a dinner party at her sister’s house. When we arrived, she insisted I come in for a drink. I soon realised I was a gooseberry: there was a table set for four – candles, flowers and all – and the only guests were the two women and two men. One of them was John, and we had a very brief conversation because I was so anxious to get out of the way.

Next day, at about 5pm, my PA and I were just leaving the house to take the dog for a walk when John arrived on a Harley-Davidson trike. He was surprised to see me, because, he said, I’d told him I was going to Canada on a promotional tour for my new novel. I was, but not until the following day. He gave me a note, which explained that he lived a mile or so across the fields and suggested we go for a dog walk one day. I said, well, how about coming with us right now?

We all walked round a soggy field. Then my PA went home, and John came in for a drink. My main memory is of watching him walk up and down, talking about Alexander the Great. I was barely listening – just trying to work out why I fancied him. The next day I left for Canada and spent the following fortnight looking at my phone, hoping for an email or a text.

Finally, just before I left for home, he texted asking me out for dinner. I replied that I’d be in London, watching a play at my son Daniel’s charity, which taught drama to ex-offenders. If he could bear to come, I’d get him a ticket.

He could and did. And, since the chairs were crammed together, his thigh was right against mine. I spent most of the play wondering if what I felt was deliberate pressure on my leg. Or was he just squashed against me, with my imaginings wishful thinking?

The next time I saw him was when I gave a talk as part of a literary festival in his local village church. I knew he’d be in the audience, and by now I was definitely interested and hoping he was keen, too. But I had recently turned 70 and guessed he was much younger (I was right, he was 64). I told myself I’d better let him know just how old I was.

I figured the deeper in I got, the more painful his walking away would be. Better bite on the bullet now, I thought. So, I weaved a mention of my turning 70 into my talk and rather expected him to sneak out of the church. But he didn’t.

Many weeks later, when discussing that meeting, I asked him if he remembered me saying I was 70. No, he replied, I was so distracted by your boobs under that bright orange jumper, I don’t think I heard a single word you said.

I’d been a widow for eight years then, and I’d got used to it, even liked it. It had been liberating not to have anyone to consider but myself: no need to call home to confess to missing the train again; no need to put lunch on the table at 1pm; nothing to stop me eating yogurt out of the carton, standing by the fridge; no biscuit crumbs in the bed. Oh, and the bliss of sole command of the TV remote!

Single status had a lot to recommend it.

When my first husband, Rayne, was alive, we had no social life to speak of because he was a writer, happiest undisturbed in his study at the top of the house. He’d appear for lunch, eat it in ten minutes and disappear again for a nap on his sofa upstairs, after which he’d come down, make himself a cup of tea, share a biscuit with the dog, and go back upstairs to write.

All this suited me fine. I spent four days a week in London, running my businesses. I’d eat with friends in my restaurant, see business colleagues, editors and journalists, go out with friends to rival restaurants, or to the theatre, cinema or art exhibitions, and play tennis every week at the Vanderbilt Club in Shepherd’s Bush. It was all exciting and exhausting, and when I got home, I was perfectly happy with scrambled eggs in front of the telly and weekends with the children, home from boarding school.

John had lived for ten years in the next village, but I had never met him. After the festival, we had a date in the pub, with a chaste kiss at my door, and then he asked me to supper at his house. He fed me haggis, neeps and tatties, which were excellent. I mean, it’s not difficult, is it? Haggis comes ready cooked, you just microwave it. Ditto frozen mash, and what is wrong with tomato ketchup?

I loved it. So that worked. In fact, it worked so well, I stayed for breakfast. John’s next effort to cook for me could, had he been a less humourful man, ended our relationship. He had bought two Dexter steaks, perfect fat rounds of beef fillet from one of the smallest, slowest growing, and most flavourful breeds. I was thrilled to see them. How often do you get fillet steak, let alone from a Dexter beast?

I watched John put a lump of butter into a frying pan, and then, to my horror, instead of waiting for the butter to sizzle, he dropped the steaks into the lukewarm pan.

As every cook knows, or should know, if you don’t get the pan blazing hot, the meat won’t brown and sear, the juices will run out, and the steak will be dry and tasteless.

I leapt at the pan, snatched the tongs from his hand, shoved him out of the way, rescued the steaks and took over the cooking. This was probably a mistake: I’ve been doing all the cooking ever since. I cannot properly explain how grateful I am to have found John: he makes it possible for me to enjoy old age to a degree that my mother, on her own, never could.

What she most missed, she said, was not someone to do things with, but rather someone to do nothing with. Those cosy domestic exchanges like ‘So, how have you spent your day?’ or ‘What’s for supper then?’ are the gentle undercurrent of affection.

To have someone who is interested in absolutely every aspect of my life, from what earrings I wear to the welfare of my grandchildren, is like a shield against the world.

John looks after me (carries my bag, opens the bottles and jars my arthritic hands cannot, fills my car with petrol, charges my phone – and goes hunting for it when I lose it, which is all the time), does the shopping, buys all my clothes and a lot of earrings and necklaces, and drives me everywhere, even to Scotland and back. He ties my shoelaces and does up my bra. I put on his socks and cut his toenails.

I remember a friend (now sadly dead) warning me not to take John for granted. ‘He’s such a lovely man, and he obviously adores you. Better not get too used to being spoiled. He could end up feeling unappreciated.’

She was right. When I’m irritated by him – say, when I’ve stacked the dishwasher and he repacks it because he thinks my chuck-it-all-in-any-old-how method doesn’t work, or when he leaves the doors and windows wide open in midwinter (he doesn’t feel the cold, but I do), or when I trip over his shoes – I have to remind myself that the balance is in his favour. Few husbands could be as loving and thoughtful, and as much fun, as John.

Since I’m singing his praises, I might as well go the whole hog and tell you that in 15 years, he has never bored me; that he still makes me laugh; that he’s really interesting, especially on subjects he knows a lot about, like history, art and warfare. That he is gallant and charming and tells me I look great, and that he has never, ever shown the slightest bit of resentment, jealousy or irritation over the attention I get, or the time I spend away on TV film sets or stages, or the money I earn.

He’s a good-looking old coffin-dodger, and I adore him.

Now, I guess what every reader wants to know about geriatric lovers is: do they still do it? How often? Is it as good as it used to be? And so on. I’ll not answer any questions about my sex life, but I would like to say a few things about old people in general.

The first time I went on the TV show Loose Women, sometime in the 2000s I think, one of the items was a physical demonstration of how to have sex in your old age if arthritis prevented you doing what you’d done when younger. Two old codgers in pyjamas, lying on a double bed, demonstrated various unorthodox positions. That a TV programme could bravely tackle the subject 25 years ago is impressive.

Less impressive was that I, in my early sixties, fit and well, found it hilarious and slightly embarrassing. Younger people find the idea of love, let alone sex, between old people hard to believe in, and even harder to stomach. There must be something innate in this reaction, I think. I confess, that, even though I’m a beneficiary of late-life love myself, I still don’t enjoy watching old people snogging on film as much as I do young people. It doesn’t quite disgust me, but it does embarrass me. Why is that?

Maybe it’s about good looks. We’d rather watch beautiful people kissing than wrinkly old ones. Are we programmed to like the most attractive of the species? And older people are, it’s sadly true, less lovely to look at than they once were.

And there is something amusing about old people falling in love. Recently, on the TV programme This Morning, John was asked where he and I had first met. He answered, quick as a flash, ‘geriatric Tinder’.

It got a good laugh but was promptly followed by the tabloids picking it up and pretending they believed it. Prue Leith Found Love Through Geriatric Tinder. Soon it could be gospel truth on Wikipedia. One or two of my single women friends asked me how to get on to it! As far as I know, it doesn’t exist. John made it up on the spur of the moment.

Another time when I was a guest on Loose Women, the discussion was about a new American drug to gee-up women’s libidos. One of the hosts asked me if I would ever take it. I replied something like, well if I needed it, and if it was safe and legalised in the UK, and not criminally expensive, maybe I’d consider it.

Understandably not impressed with this boring response, the director had someone run across the floor with a microphone to my husband, sitting in the front row of the audience. ‘John what would you feel about Prue taking a libido-enhancing drug?’

‘God, don’t give her any more!’ said John, ‘I’d have to call in re-enforcements!’

Which brings me to HRT (hormone replacement therapy). I’ve been on it ever since I had a hysterectomy at 40. Until quite recently, doctors were reluctant to prescribe HRT because it was thought taking oestrogen would dangerously increase the risk of breast cancer. But recent studies have shown that the benefits of HRT massively outweigh the risks, which are in any case small.

Acceptance of testosterone for women has taken longer, but the particular joy of testosterone is that it restores enthusiasm for sex. Most women find it improves their arousal, desire, orgasm and pleasure, and though it is linked in the public mind to pumped-up male aggression, the amounts needed for women are tiny.

It’s true that testosterone encourages your beard and moustache to grow – but as we get older our chins get hairier anyway. Tweezers become a girl’s best friend.

All sorts of things can turn off lust, and ‘having a headache’ is only one of them. Lack of sleep, too much booze, unhappiness and stress all cause desire to flag.

Equally, the oddest little things can turn it on: a glimpse of chest through an open-necked shirt, the tilt of a Panama hat, knobbly knees below tennis shorts, a well-phrased text. For men, maybe it’s a gold chain lying on a tanned neck, a too-big watch on a slender wrist, Prada heels.

But the sexiest thing is not someone’s eyes or mouth or neck or breast. It’s what’s going on between that person’s ears: what interests them, what excites them, what makes them come alive. And I think those are the things that make love and lust last.

Oddly, you can think you are through with love, or with lust, and then nature just proves otherwise. My mother once told me that all the time my dad was ill, for the three years before he died, they never made love, and she never felt cheated.

But within a few months of his death, she was suddenly randy as hell; she married my stepfather within a year. She was in her forties.

I had almost the same experience, although when my first husband died, I was 62 and he had been ailing for ten years. In all that time I didn’t want sex any more than he did, and after he died, I was sure I was well past

all that. But four years later, on holiday with an old (and, I thought, platonic) friend, I suddenly found myself positively lusting after him. That led to a four-year love affair.

To me, old age is largely in the mind. My parents’ generation, and many of mine, imbibed the idea that once we’re past 60, all sorts of things are ‘inappropriate’ for us: dancing, sitting on a barstool, wearing pillar-box red, smoking weed.

They seem to think we should all wear greige, sit in a corner and knit. That we should stop thinking about romance, love and sex and devote ourselves to good causes and ungrateful grandchildren. So often, we unconsciously buy into that viewpoint – and even if we don’t, we don’t challenge it.

Of course, there are some things we can no longer do, just because our bodies won’t let us. In my case, they are: playing tennis (I’d fall over); running (ditto); riding horses (too old to fall off and break something); riding a bike (too wobbly); dancing (also too wobbly); serious gardening (too weak to dig or push a loaded barrow and once down on the ground, can’t get up again); and fly fishing (except from a boat).

But there’s quite enough that I still love to do, and which I hope to be up for until I’m (as John so charmingly puts it) on the wrong side of the grass.

I’m 86, still working, and I love it. I have the most varied and interesting of lives, sometimes with a day in London dashing from one appointment to another.

If John and I have a few free hours in between, we will take ourselves off to an exhibition. John is deeply interested in, and knowledgeable about, art. I tend to forget almost immediately what we’ve been looking at, but I’m always up for the next one.

When I’m at home I’m just as busy, with Zoom meetings, cooking, writing, doing the little gardening I can manage and going with John to the vegetable farm shop we love.

People constantly ask me, ‘Where do you get your energy from?’ I’ve no idea, but I attribute it to good genes and to being greedy. Greedy for everything: for life, food, love, work and play.

Never mind breakfast and lunch… I just lived off cake 

I shall miss my days on the Great British Bake Off, which though long (pick up 5.20am, call time 7.30am, wrap 7.30pm) were completely stress-free. I was mollycoddled through it with make-up, wardrobe, runners and drivers, all bent on making me look good, brewing me cups of tea or shepherding me about.

The actual job is a piece of cake (excuse the pun). I didn’t have to write scripts, learn lines, rehearse or act – just walk on, eat cake, say what I think. Job done.

The Bake Off set is a great place to work. In nine years, I never saw anyone angry, shouting or walking off in a huff. The atmosphere is exactly what you see on screen. Everyone likes each other and has a lot of fun, and everyone wants the bakers to do well. The only problem is trying not to eat too much cake, which I often failed at. I never put on weight over the months of Bake Off, but my diet on filming days was hardly healthy: I didn’t have breakfast or lunch, I just lived on cake, sometimes consuming 1,400 or 1,600 calories of the recommended daily 2,000 for women.

In the evening, I might have a light supper, but more often than not I skipped that too, spending the remaining calories on a large glass (or two) of red wine. I count calories almost unconsciously. Most women of my age can tell you pretty accurately how many calories there are in that bowl of soup, that sandwich.

I don’t think any nutritionist would approve of my Bake Off diet of cake and wine, but it suited me. The other advantage is that I had a lot of time off during the shoot. While the bakers baked, my fellow judge Paul Hollywood and I had little to do, so I wrote two novels, three cookbooks, updated my autobiography I’ll Try Anything Once, and wrote this sitting in my little shepherd’s hut (the Bake Off equivalent of the actors’ Winnebago) .

I’m very aware that any fame or ‘profile’ I might have, I owe to Bake Off. I wasn’t anything like as much in demand before I got that job and I confess to liking the attention that comes with it. It’s lovely being welcomed as an old friend by the likes of Jonathan Ross or Queen Camilla, even though I know they are probably faking it.

And I can’t pretend I don’t enjoy the other perks of celebrity, like being offered a private tour of Westminster Abbey, suites in posh hotels or even a complimentary holiday in the Maldives.

So, now I’ve left, will I miss the limelight? I’ll certainly miss the friendship and fun in the Bake Off tent.

My holiday blunder on Twitter that still haunts me 

When I was offered the job as Paul Hollywood’s fellow judge on The Great British Bake Off (replacing Mary Berry, who had decided to stay with the BBC when the programme transferred to Channel 4) I’d never watched the show, though obviously I’d heard of it.

So, when I walked into the tent for the first time, it was quite a shock. If I’d thought of it at all, it was as a little programme watched by country women who made cakes for the village fete.

I’d no idea that whole families, from Great Grandpa to little Johnny, and many millions more in 200 territories around the world were glued to it. And I certainly didn’t foresee that my first brush with ‘fame’ would be better described as an infamous baptism of fire.

I managed, while on holiday in Bhutan, to tweet the name of the winner a couple of hours before the final aired.

John and I were in the remote west of the country and, having been walking all morning, we were having a siesta. I picked up my phone and to my surprise saw we had a signal (we hadn’t had one for days), and emails were popping in.

Top of the list was one from Love Productions, the producers of Bake Off, saying, ‘Don’t forget to congratulate the winner after 10 o’clock.’

Thinking the message was days old, and anyway seeing it was after 10 o’clock, I hastily tweeted the winner, Sophie Faldo, with ‘Bravo Sophie’.

Then went cold as I realised that no one else – not Paul, nor the presenters, nor Sophie’s fellow contestants – had congratulated her.

In seconds, Emma Freud had tweeted ‘Eeek, it’s tonight! Delete, delete’.

I was now in such a panic I couldn’t work my phone, and didn’t know how to delete something from Twitter.

I rang my PA in England, who said at once, ‘Don’t worry, I’ve deleted it.’

But it was 89 seconds too late, and the news had gone viral. Then Reuters, the international news agency, were on the phone.

In my desperate state, I said: ‘I can’t talk to you now. I’ve made the most monumental cock-up. I could kill myself. Sorry.’

Of course, that became the story: Prue suicidal over divulging the winner.

Poor Sophie, she should have had the headlines celebrating her win. Instead, every paper led with my blunder.

That’s the kind of fame you can do without. It felt like the end of the world, and reminding myself ‘It’s only cake!’ didn’t work.

Some viewers obviously felt the same. I had plenty of ‘You’ve ruined my life’ messages; I guess I was lucky not to get death threats. People really do care about Bake Off.

Adapted from Being Old… and learning to love it! by Prue Leith (Short Books, £20), to be published February 26. © Prue Leith 2026. To order a copy for £18 (offer valid to 28/02/26; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.