Bake Off judge Prue Leith has opened up about her first husband's death. (Image: Channel 4)

Bake Off's Prue Leith left 'distraught and guilt-ridden' over heartbreaking loss

by · Birmingham Live

Prue Leith was left “distraught” and “guilt-ridden” after the heartbreaking death of her first husband Rayne Kruger.

Property developer and author Rayne was rushed to hospital in the run-up to Christmas 2002, where Great British Bake Off judge Prue revealed he had a “horrible time”. Prue says at one point he was “thrashing about” as medics fought to get him breathing again.

However, Rayne appeared to show some signs of improvement in hospital, at one point being able to get out of bed and sit in a chair. In her memoir I’ll Try Anything Once, Prue reveals she kissed Rayne and left him in hospital to prepare for Christmas, promising him she would return later.

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When she arrived back at the hospital that night however, Prue began to suspect the worst. The curtains around Rayne’s bed were drawn, and she was intercepted by a nurse as she went towards her husband.

Prue writes: “She turned me around and steered me into a side room. I knew the worst.”

Prue Leith was "distraught" after her first husband's death. (Image: PA)

Medics explained 80-year-old Rayne had died “15 minutes” before Prue arrived. They said they had “done all they could” as two doctors and three nurses fought for 10 minutes to save him.

Prue, who will appear on The Great British Bake Off: An Extra Slice tonight, however says she would have preferred her husband had “died gently while having a nap”. She said: “I was distraught that I’d not been there.”

Adding: “I spent maybe 40 minutes, first guilt-ridden, then slowly realising that the perfect death is mostly a fiction, and that it did not matter. I ended up glad I’d not been there. I thought, selfishly, that if I had been, then my last memory of Rayne would be of him in extremis. And that would be hard to bear.”

Prue, who shared son Danny Kruger and adopted daughter Li-Da Kruger with Rayne, said she eventually felt an air of “gratitude” for the 40 years the couple spent together. Prue married her second husband, retired fashion designer John Playfair in 2016.