Rising to the occasion:

New TV series for Bake Off presenter Sue Perkins.

The Geat British Bake Off favourite Sue Perkins is putting her wry sense of humour to good use as the chair of a new panel show Insert Name Here. In the series, two teams of three compete to answer questions about famous people, past and present, who have one thing in common – they share the same name. The presenter, who also fronts travelogues such as The Mekong River With Sue

Perkins and Kolkata With Sue Perkins, says that, “It’s an absolute pleasure making Insert Name Here. The format is loose enough to provide a space where people can just talk about anything.

“You have a basic conceit that we’re going to discuss Steves or Stephanies or Georges or Georgias. Within that is a repository for anything that the panellists find curious or interesting in their own lives. There is a broad enough scope to draw on lots of different gags from lots of different areas of life.”

Sue, and her long-time presenting partner Mel Giedroyc, have parted company with The Great British

Bake Off after it moved from the BBC to Channel 4 in the UK. According to Sue, it was a mutual decision that they made between themselves “wordlessly”.

But the duo have already lined up their next production together. They will co-present Let’s Sing And

Dance for Comic Relief. Sue cannot foresee a time when she and Mel will not be working together – after all, their friendship stretches back to the 1990s when they met at Cambridge University.

“I remember my first meeting with Mel very clearly,” says Sue. “It was my first-ever gig, which I had been dared to

“I want to do in-depth journeys where you get to the heart of people’s experiences.” – Sue Perkins

do by a friend. I did an appalling set that I’d just made up. “I remember afterwards this shock of peroxide hair with a broken piano’s worth of teeth and pink DMs (Doc Martens) – crucial to accessorising the look – came up to me. It was Mel. I got chatting to her and had this slow, unfolding realisation that I’d just met a person I’d know for the rest of my life.” The rest is TV history. Mel and Sue went on to form a successful double act – they played to rave reviews at the Edinburgh Festival in 1993 and had their first TV hit four years later with the chat show, Light Lunch. They are best friends to this day. Sue, whose best-selling memoir, Spectacles, was published last year, assesses what makes them so close. “We take the serious things seriously and everything else we laugh at. We particularly laugh at each other. We are always there for each other. “We have great respect for each other and we love each other’s families. But outside that, we play – we’re like children.” As for the future, Sue would love to do more travelling. She has already made well-received programmes about the Mekong and Kolkata. She doesn’t like swanning around in glamorous places – she much prefers really getting to know people from all walks of life. “The way I travel is not dipping in somewhere, saying, ‘Oh how lovely’ and then running away. “I want to do in-depth journeys where you get to the heart of people’s experiences. The privilege of travelling is the people you meet, not the accommodation.

“When the Mekong series went out, one journalist wrote, ‘Another celebrity off to a five-star hotel’. To which I’d say this: ‘If you can find even a one-star hotel in the places I stayed in Tibet and Cambodia, I’d love to know. Please write to me’.”