Prue Leith admits she drowned kittens as a child in shocking confession

Dame Prue Leith has revealed she drowned a litter of kittens as a child.

The Great British Bake Off judge described the shocking act as a ‘traumatic experience’ that plagued her for weeks afterward.

Recalling the horrific memory in her memoir I’ll Try Anything Once, Dame Prue revealed that her mother, Margaret Inglis, instructed her to sink the baby cats just hours after their birth.

‘My mother and I, then 11, had just drowned some kittens… and for weeks I imagined those poor dead creatures,’ she penned.

‘Too many kittens was a frequent occurrence and there had come a day when my mother, unable to find homes for yet another litter, decided to drown the latest batch.

‘My protests were met with a firm, “Darling, it has to be done. They are only a few hours old. They will hardly know it’s happening”.’

Dame Prue wrote that her mother said they didn’t need to hold the bag of kittens under the water for too long in order to send them to ‘sleep’ but that they ‘fought like the devil for life’.

She recalled that her mother then had a change of heart, but the baker insisted they continued and added: ‘I held the bag under water until the last kitten had stopped mewing.’

Dame Prue was born in Cape Town, South Africa, and spent her childhood there before moving to London aged 20, in 1960.

She recently told Metro.co.uk that she rather enjoys being famous.

‘There have always been people who know me but yes, now obviously with Great British Bake Off I get much more attention, but I’m quite an egotist,’ she said. ‘I enjoy it.

‘I like the attention. I don’t understand why people wouldn’t – of course I can understand if you were really really famous so famous that you couldn’t go to the supermarket and you couldn’t get anywhere.’

Great British Bake Off airs Tuesdays at 8pm on Channel 4.

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