Prue admits she “hasn’t got much longer left” and wants to spend more time with her husband John Playfair. The baker has even taken to travelling with John, 71, when she has to go away for work, joking that he is “pretty close” to being her “carer”. Prue says that now she is in her eighties, she feels that death keeps “inserting” itself into her life.

Speaking to the Mail Online, she said: “I never thought about death at all, but now, in my eighties, it crosses my mind several times a day – not deliberately, just inserting itself into everything.”

Prue says she often finds herself wondering “how many more summers have I got” and whether she should extend one of her TV contracts. She admits that they are only “fleeting thoughts” and that while they “don’t trouble her,” she has to accept that she hasn’t “got much time left”.

This however has meant that Prue has decided to enjoy her life. It led to Prue enjoying a dream summer holiday in Uzbekistan, taking a tour of the Silk Road with John.

Prue described the trip as a holiday of a lifetime. She says that the desire to have a holiday, with Bake Off filming taking up a large part of the summer, inspired her decision to quit the show.

She told the Spectator: “I suddenly realised that if I don't give up Bake Off, I'll never again have a holiday in the south of France, in Italy, in Spain, or even in Cornwall or Scotland."

And while she is keen to enjoy her time away from the show, Prue says she is “anxious” to avoid a situation like her brother David. After being diagnosed with bone cancer, Prue says David spent “three weeks out of four in agony” before he died in 2012.

It prompted Prue to campaign for assisted dying after witnessing David “begging to die”. She told the Mail: “I want to save my family having to go through the horrors of watching me die slowly, especially as I am unlikely to be a brave sufferer.

“David died in his seventies from bone cancer, a particularly horrible disease because it doesn’t kill you: you have to wait for the cancer to spread to an organ for that.”

Prue’s decision to support assisted dying however has seen her at loggerheads with her son, Danny Kruger, the Reform UK MP for East Wiltshire. Prue explains that Danny worries “the law will inevitably be widened” so anyone can ask to die, including people with temporary depression or even children.

She described Danny as a "formidable opponent,” even if she believes his concerns are “unfounded”. Should Prue find herself diagnosed with a disease that leads to a “slow and excruciating death,” she would prefer to spend time with her loved ones and die on her own terms.