Great British Bake Off judge Prue Leith says she and her husband have finally made plans to live together in a new home.

The restaurateur and author, 79, married John Playfair in 2016 and the couple currently have separate houses in the Cotswolds.

She told Hello! magazine: “My husband has a house in the next village, but he stays here every night and only goes home to do his laundry.”

Prue Leith
Prue Leith (Hello! magazine)

She said she and Playfair will officially live together “one day” when they build their “eventide home”, which is understood to mean a house they will grow old in.

Referring to their current abodes, Leith added: “But we didn’t move in together here because, at our age, you both have a house full of stuff and the thought of having to throw half of it away is awful.”

She said they plan to move to a nearby farmhouse and that her children can take over her current residence.

During a photoshoot at her Cotswolds home, she explained: “John and I will move there (to the farmhouse).

“Then the children can have this (house), if they want it. And if they don’t, we will sell it. We have to do it while we are energetic enough.”

Leith, who has just released her latest fiction novel The Lost Son, defended her fellow Bake Off judge Paul Hollywood, saying he isn’t “nasty”.

Hello! magazine
Hello! magazine (Hello!)

She said: “I don’t think Paul is nasty. Paul is scary because he has this wonderful ability of just keeping quiet.

“He just doesn’t say anything, he just looks at you with those steely blue eyes and it must be terrifying, whereas I gabble away – I always want to fill the silence.”

Read the full interview in this week’s Hello! magazine