I opened Leith's in Notting Hill in 1969 and it eventually worked its way into being awarded a Michelin star. At the time, there were a few women running small bistros - but I was the first woman to have a 'serious,' expensive restaurant.
Prue Leith
What I want to do is produce really delicious food. I want it to look nice, because when you see food you should want to eat it. You shouldn't be saying, 'Oh my goodness, isn't the chef clever, he can weave the Eiffel Tower out of carrot sticks.'
Any woman will tell you after the menopause, nobody whistle at her, well - that's just the beginning. As you get older people don't want you at their parties, we all are prejudiced about old people.
My worst habit is opening the fridge and thinking: 'I'd like to eat something.'
All I need for a perfect holiday is sun and some peace and quiet. Those make for perfect book-writing conditions.
With great difficulty, I persuaded my dentist to saw one of my teeth level with the others. He thought it might kill the tooth, but it didn't. I wanted it done because I was doing a lot of television with food and I saw myself eating with these horrible crooked teeth.
I have strong hair, so if I've had a good haircut, I can wash my hair in the bath and not worry about it.
At barbecues, people just like to eat a lot of meat; it's extraordinary. They eat far more than they normally would at a dinner party.
I am very in favour of children having a nap after lunch because then they're not whiney and grizzly by six o'clock.
It's so nice to slip into the lap of luxury.
The most followed chef is Delia Smith. She is my age and doesn't try to be entertaining, she encourages people to learn the basics.
In my 40s: I had two children young enough to think their parents wonderful, my business was booming, I was happily married and living in the Cotswolds with a veg garden and ponies in the paddock. Who could not be happy?
I'm not clever. But I am level-headed, hard-working, dogged.
The obesity problem among children is very serious. When advertising budgets are big and business can corrupt the way we live so that it becomes the norm to snack all day - and if you are never hungry you are never going to feel like eating a healthy meal - that can't be right.
I'd love to look incredibly glamorous, but I am a wholesome, comforting nanny type: I think I look like an advertisement for wholemeal flour or something.
I believe passionately that the notion of having to work at a marriage is baloney. Making sacrifices and being a martyr makes one hell of a bad marriage.
My first taste memory is of our nanny in South Africa making white bread sandwiches with salad cream, which was potato mashed with a cheap mayonnaise thing with bits in it of - I suppose - pickled cucumber. I absolutely loved them.
I've never been much of a cake-maker.
Modern cookbooks are marketing tools for chefs. They're in the bestseller lists but no one cooks from them.
I went to the Sorbonne in Paris for two years and read all the classics by authors like Victor Hugo and Guy de Maupassant. I was supposed to read them in French but I cheated and used the English versions instead.
Children aren't being taught to cook or encouraged to try things or told why food is important.
I do think it is the responsibility of parents to feed their children properly.
Nobody should eat too much cake.
I didn't actually know what a treasure 'The Great British Bake Off' was, so I just thought, 'oh it'll be fun to do that, I'd like to do that.' Then when I went and had to have an audition and meet Paul Hollywood, I suddenly thought, 'this is really important.'
People say I'm a celebrity chef, and I am on telly a lot but that's because I judge contests. Perhaps I'm more of a celebrity eater than a cook.
Hua Hin is Thailand's royal beach resort and home to the king's summer palace. The local food is fantastic, the weather is beautiful, everything's cheap and the Thai people are so friendly and warm.
I love writing fiction and can do it anywhere - I once even missed a flight because I was so engrossed.
Food shouldn't do you any harm, obviously you don't want a bad diet, but it should be one of life's great pleasures.
If I am tanned, I feel a million times better.
I've been an entrepreneur, a writer, a food correspondent. I might have been an architect - but I'm bad at maths.
It's tough to eat well if you don't know how to cook.
Now the look of the book dictates the sale. In my day you could still buy a good cookbook in paperback with no pictures at all. I doubt if that would sell today. But those books were much used: they lived in the kitchen and got splattered with custard and gravy.
I go to Michelin-starred restaurants as part of my job, but that's not how I want to eat all the time.
I couldn't live without my faithful companion, Megs the dog.
I was an intellectual groupie. Still am.
You can serve good food on a budget provided you don't waste it.
I used to always employ South Africans and Aussies and Kiwis - I can't admit this, well I can now, but I couldn't admit it at the time - but I didn't want wet English lads who didn't want to work in the catering trade anyway.
I went to drama school but soon realised I was terrible at acting, so I ditched drama school for art school.
I am not saying celebrity chefs don't encourage children to cook. However, their programmes are so entertaining, you end up stuffing your face with Pot Noodles instead of learning from them.
Aged six, I sailed from South Africa to England by steam ship with my family. It was a three-week journey. I remember crying on my birthday when I didn't get the enormous teddy bear that was for sale in the ship's shop but, aside from that, I had a wonderful time.
Very few parents give out healthy lunchboxes due to pressure from their children.
I believe in good, honest food. That's always been my ethos.
For me the best food in the world is New British. It's quite classical cooking with really simple but good-quality ingredients. I also like top-end restaurants and pub grub done well.
I think the most important thing in the whole world is love and relationships, and if you don't have them it's quite bad.
I won't eat something which is high in calories and not particularly wonderful, because that's just not worth it, you feel guilty after.
If I'm going to do something, I'll do it properly or not at all.
I came through the Sixties so I was perfectly aware of drug-taking but I came from South Africa and we were brought up in quite an old-fashioned way. If I went to a rave or a party, I'd be behind the barbecue flipping the burgers. I wasn't out there partying.
I'm not saying I'm proud of the fact I had a long affair with a married man, but it did help my business. By the time I married and had children I had the business under my belt.
I'm quite lazy. I don't want to learn a new subject like shipbuilding.
I've baked more cakes since I've been on 'Bake Off' than I have in my life.
