Prue Leith: My plan to get real catering back into hospitals

Picture the scene: we are filming the opening link for The Great British Bake Off. Here I am in the woods, dressed in a lion suit; Paul Hollywood is the Tin Man, Sandi Toksvig the Scarecrow, and, guess what, Noel Fielding is Dorothy. I leap out on to the yellow brick road, roaring — I feel a hammer blow to my ankle, and end up whimpering like the Cowardly Lion I’m portraying. I have snapped my Achilles tendon. Danny the medic, who has had nothing more exciting than bakers’ cut fingers to deal with for three years, finally gets to use his ambulance, wheelchair and considerable skills. He doses me with painkillers and sticks my foot in a bucket containing more ice than water. Soon the agony of that has wiped out any injury pain. An hour later I’m back in my lion suit, this time held up by Dorothy and the Tin Man, one on each side. We grin at the camera. ‘Welcome to The Great British Bake Off!’

I’m now in a ‘Beckham boot’, in a wheelchair or on crutches. Before I’d even got home, hubby John had bought me psychedelic sticks from Cool Crutches and a wheelchair (sadly standard black). The chair is wonderfully designed for the occupier, but hell for the carer. The handles are too low and John now has backache and a dodgy hip. But I’m grateful to both crutches and wheelchair. They allow me to do absolutely nothing, while everyone fetches and carries around me. John invited 20 people to lunch at the weekend, I happily forwent my usual cooking, tidying, flower-arranging and fussing with the placement. The (excellent) poached salmon and salade Niçoise came from Roger the French fishmonger in Chipping Norton, and everyone mucked in while I queened it.