Nigella will be 'wonderful' on Bake Off, says Prue Leith

Nigella Lawson will be "wonderful" as the new judge on The Great British Bake Off, her predecessor Dame Prue Leith has said.

Dame Prue, who lives in Oxfordshire, announced that she would be leaving the reality baking competition in January, saying : "Now feels like the right time to step back".

Broadcaster Channel 4 later revealed Lawson would become only the programme's fourth permanent judge, alongside mainstay Paul Hollywood, for its 17th series later this year.

When asked by BBC Radio Oxford if she had any guidance for her successor, Dame Prue said: "She doesn't need any advice from me."

"She's so good and she will bring to it's a whole fresh look and she'll be wonderful," Dame Prue said.

"She's funny, she knows her onions and she's delightful."

Dame Prue was hired for Bake Off after the series jumped from the BBC to Channel 4 in 2016, replacing another Oxfordshire resident, Dame Mary Berry who lives in Henley on Thames.

She said leaving the programme was difficult because "I enjoyed it so much and I would still enjoy it if I was doing it and I could probably do it for a few more years and go on enjoying it."

"But the truth is I've got an awful lot of other things I want to do and I'm getting on a bit, you know, next week I'm 86."

"I can't go on enjoying myself eating cake all the time - I want to get on with other things."

Her comments come as her Leiths Education cookery training service launch a new free primary school curriculum to help get children in the kitchen.

"There's been three generations with no cookery going on in schools, or very little, so what we thought was that the answer was to have a really good curriculum, starting with four year olds and going right through primary school," Dame Prue said.

She explained that the scheme had already been trialled in nearly 50 schools, with 82% of children involved seeing their cooking skills "improve enormously".

"In my 50 or 60 years of teaching cooking, I have never yet met a child who didn't enjoy a cookery lesson."

"When they're very young they're so curious and they're imaginative and they want to try things."

You can follow BBC Oxfordshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.