‘Great British Baking Show’ Star Prue Leith Recalls Making ‘Bad’ Tea For Queen Elizabeth (VIDEO)
Prue Leith once royally botched a cup of tea for Queen Elizabeth II. The star of The Great British Baking Show spilled the tea about the snafu in a clip shared on the Netflix series’ Instagram page on Tuesday (October 15).
“I had to serve our late Queen a cup of tea years ago,” Leith recalled. “I was the caterer at a building that she was opening.” Attempting to give the Queen the exact type of tea she preferred, she “rang up the palace” ahead of the event, but much like many things Royals-related, her tea preference was kept a mystery. “I thought, if I know how she likes the tea, I’ll be able to produce a good one,” Leith said. Then came the snag: “The equerry would not tell.”
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The staffer she rang did, however, specify that the Queen’s tea should be served “on a silver tea tray” with a teapot containing hot water and lemon slices; the rest left an (Earl) grey area. At the event, Leith shared that after greeting “a long line of dignitaries,” Queen Elizabeth “must have been gasping for a cup of tea. She’d just toured around this building for two hours.” Finally, the moment came for Leith to meet the Queen.
“Black or white, ma’am?” Leith asked. “Black, please,” the Queen responded. Leith proceeded to place a lemon into the tea cup and, as she was pouring hot water, the Queen told her: “No lemon, thanks.”
“I had no second cup,” Leith continued, explaining she “could hardly flick it onto the floor.” So, what should she do?
Leith quickly thought of a solution, putting the lemon, now soaked in tea, on the silver tray, leaving a “great brown stain” spreading. Leith brushed off the awkward moment by topping the Queen’s cup off with some more hot water. “I thought that usually people who like black tea like it weak,” Leith said. But again, she was wrong.
“When I had just come to the brim of the teacup, she said, ‘I like it strong,’” Leith added. “She got weak lemony tea when what she wanted was strong black tea,” the 81-year-old restaurateur and cookbook author said. “I’ve felt bad ever since, but there it was.”
Thankfully, Queen Elizabeth didn’t pour over the botched tea situation for long. In 2021, Leith was named a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for her services to food, broadcasting, and charity.
Other celebrities, of course, have flat-out broken protocol with the Royal Family. In one of the ’90s most iconic pop culture moments, Geri “Ginger Spice” Halliwell of The Spice Girls allegedly pinched King Charles III’s butt at the premiere of Spice World. Halliwell set the record straight in 2016, clarifying to The Times that she “patted” his behind.
While filming Suicide Squad, Cara Delevingne dared Margot Robbie to prank-call Prince Harry, which she did. “I said, ‘We can’t prank-call royalty,’ but anyway we did,'” Robbie told The Sun in 2018, “and he was so cool with it.”
The Great British Baking Show, Season 15, Fridays, Netflix
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