Prue Leith, 86, discusses planning her death

has revealed she would like to plan her own death.

And the 86-year-old cook admitted that one of her favourite books discusses 'all the different ways to kill yourself'.

Speaking at the Hay Literary Festival yesterday, she said: 'I'd like to plan my own death.

'Ideally, like almost everybody, if you asked them how they'd like to die, they'd like to die in their own bed, surrounded by the people they love and at a time and a place of their choice.

'And so, I was thinking, "How do I do this? How do I kill myself?" Especially because it's not legal here. 

'Suicide is legal, there's nothing to stop me killing myself. But I can't get any help to do it.'

Dame Prue, who has long campaigned in favour of assisted dying legislation – something her son, Reform MP Danny Kruger, vehemently opposed – said one of her favourite books is a publication which discusses methods of suicide and euthanasia.

She said: 'My husband bought it on eBay. It discusses all the different ways to kill yourself. What's dangerous about them, what the risks are, where it's legal, where it's not legal.'

Recalling how terminally ill patients were once treated, she added: 'In the good old days, most doctors would be relied on to just give you a bit too much morphine, and then you'd go into a coma and then you'd fall asleep, and then you wouldn't wake up. 

'That was an assisted death and that's not legal now. It probably wasn't legal then, but it was a nod and a wink.' 

Her comments echo an article she wrote for The Mail on Sunday, in which she admitted death crosses her mind 'several times a day'.

She said she feared enduring the same agonising death suffered by her brother David, who died from bone cancer in his seventies.

She said: 'I want to save my family having to go through the horrors of watching me die slowly.'

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