Bake Off star Prue Leith, 85, shares health update after ‘struggling to hear’
She shared the news at a recent public appearance.
Great British Bake Off judge Prue Leith shared she is using hearing aids after revealing she ‘really can’t hear at all’.
The 85-year-old TV personality, who recently appeared on The Masked Singer, divulged the health update during a speech at Cambridge Union as she apologised to students.
Interrupting the conversation taking place on stage, she said: ‘Sorry, I am a bit deaf so I am struggling to hear a bit.
‘This is so embarrassing because I really can’t hear at all. My husband is so cross with me as I have just been given some hearing aids and I never remember to put them in. I am so sorry,’ per The Mirror.
It’s not the first time Prue has spoken about hearing aids and how to get used to wearing them.
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In a 2021 agony aunt column for The Telegraph, she offered advice to someone whose father refused to wear hearing aids by recalling her mother’s declining hearing in her 80s.
The TV star said she kept forgetting her hearing aids while at the Cambridge Union (Picture: Ken McKay/ITV/Shutterstock)‘This is a really common problem and very tough to fix. When my mother was in her 80s, she was beginning to go deaf and senile at the same time. She was convinced we all mumbled, and actors didn’t speak clearly anymore.
‘The problem was that we’d left it too late. By the time we’d persuaded her to wear hearing aids, she’d forget what they were, fish one out shouting, “What’s this thing doing in my ear?” and hurl all two grand’s worth across the room,’ she shared at the time.
Elsewhere, during the Cambridge Union Q&A, she opened up about her decision to go on Masked Singer, saying she ‘can’t resist it if somebody asks [her]’.
She even ‘burst into laughter’ when they asked because she’s ‘never been able to get any voice out at all’ but she jumped at the chance at being taught how to sing.
Prue’s update on her poor hearing comes as she takes a small step back from the Great British Bake Off to spend more time with her family.
She has taken on a reduced role as judge for the Great British Bake Off and won’t appear in the Stand Up For Cancer specials this spring (Picture: Channel 4/Love Productions/Mark Bourdillon/PA Wire)Although she will remain a co-judge with Paul Hollywood for the annual series, she has been replaced by her close friend Caroline Waldergrave for this spring’s The Great Celebrity Bake Off for Stand Up To Cancer.
The media personality recently celebrated her 85th birthday with a sunny holiday in Perth as she posted a picture of herself in a black bathing suit with the caption: ‘Warm, light breeze and sunny!’.
The post was praised by fans who said she was ‘so stylish’ and that they ‘love seeing [her] living life’.
With all the major life changes, she recently shared her despairing view of ageing on Loose Women.
Prue said: ‘Well, I think old age stinks. It takes me 10 minutes to get myself out of bed in the morning. If I don’t do the exercises, I can’t move. There’s all sorts of things that are wrong with old age.’
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