Dame Prue Leith left her 'bath plug' in a client's 'designer salad'
Dame Prue Leith was left mortified when a client pulled out her "bath plug" from the "designer salad" she had made for a swanky lunch.
Dame Prue Leith was mortified after her "bath plug" was pulled out from a "designer salad" she made for a "smart lunch".
At the start of her illustrious career, the 85-year-old food expert - who was a private caterer at the time - attended a swanky dining event hosted by her sugarbroker client, who invited Prue as a thank you for her hardwork in providing them grub for "five or six months".
But after feeling "quite smug" over a "Senior Partner" giving a "concentrated intent" look at her "designer salad", Great British Bake Off judge Prue's self-satisfaction was shattered after they "slowly" pulled out what they initially believed was a "piece of string" in the dish, which eventually turned out to be her "bath plug".
Appearing on the latest episode of Fearne Cotton's Happy Place podcast, Prue - who at the time prepared food and had lettuces in the bath of her fourth floor rooming house lodging in Earls Court, London - recalled: "I got a client, some young lads in the city who were sugarbrokers or something, but they were quite young, and there were about five or six of them.
"And they wanted to have one smart lunch a week where they could woo clients, sort of directors, in a dining room, so they had to turn one of their offices every Friday into a directors' dining room.
"And after about - I'd been doing Friday lunches for them for perhaps five or six months, and they asked me if I'd like to join them for lunch. They were just saying, 'Thank you for feeding us so well.'
"So I was sitting there, I was quite nervous, and the Senior Partner, who was probably all of 30 but he seemed very grown up to me, he started to look at the salad with very, sort of, concentrated intent.
"And I thought, 'Ah, he's never seen a designer salad before, he doesn't know what an arugula is or a lamb's lettuce or whatever,' and I was feeling quite smug.
"And then he put his hand into the salad bowl, and he pulled out - quite slowly - a piece of string, and then he pulled a little bit further, and the piece of string turned into a chain, and then out popped my bath plug!"
Despite being left red-faced by the blunder, Prue joked it showed them that she had washed the lettuce, and that they laughed off her big mistake.
She added: "I said, 'Well, at least it proves I washed the lettuce (laughs), and they all laughed, and they were fine about it."
