Dame Prue Leith and husband cause chaos on Harley-Davidson trips

Dame Prue Leith and her husband find it "hilarious" to set off people's car alarms.

The 84-year-old chef and her spouse John Playfair enjoy embarking on pub crawls on his Harley-Davidson Tri Glider bike, and the 'Great British Bake Off' star admitted her spouse has found the perfect pitch to cause mischief with the vehicle's engine.

She told the Daily Mirror newspaper: “He thinks it’s hilarious and everybody panics. John is well known in the area. He’s very gregarious. Everybody knows him – and that he’s quite childish sometimes..

“He realised that if he revs the motorbike at a certain pitch, it sets off everybody’s car alarms.

" When I first rode on the back of it, I was really, indignant because I said: ‘You know, this is noise pollution. This is unfair. You can’t go driving through villages disturbing people with this horrible thing.’ "

But John, 78, told her people "love" the noise, and she added: “They do. There is something about a Harley that people just love the sound of it. It’s safe to sit on because you can’t turn over, so you don’t have to wear a hat. It’s like a Reliant Robin tricycle, and we go whizzing around the country.

“It’s got a lovely leather seat, it’s so lovely and comfortable, you can smell the newly mown grass as you go through. We pub crawl – I do the drinking, and he does the driving.”

The 'Cotswolds Kitchen' star used to be a keen gardener but admitted she is now too "ancient" to be as hands-on as she used to.

She said: "I love cooking and gardening, but as now I’m such an ancient old lady, I don’t really like kneeling and bending over. I remember just being really proud of myself when I was laying paving with stone slabs. I had a wheelbarrow full of stone slabs, and I could wheel this thing and then lift up the slabs. I spent the whole day doing it.

“I don’t think I could even lift the wheelbarrow, you know? I couldn’t do it anymore. John does the heavy work and I do the pretend gardening, like Marie Antoinette – I plant troughs.”