Bake Off’s Mary: I wasn’t asked to join the new show
WITH only Paul Hollywood going with Bake Off from the BBC to Channel 4, Mary Berry now admits she wasn’t even offered the chance to jump ship.
“I was never asked to go,” the cookery writer and presenter, who was praised along with hosts Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins for sticking with the Beeb when it lost the popular programme to the rival channel last year, tells Radio Times. “It was suggested what would happen if I did go to Channel 4; what I would get, the advantages, but I didn’t ever have a meeting with them. To me it’s an honour to be on the BBC. I was brought up on it.”
The 81-year-old’s loyalty to the corporation goes back to when she was a seven-year-old living through the Blitz in Bath – a two-day 1942 German bombing raid on the city.
“Oh gosh, the noise!” she adds. “It was very bad, a lot of deaths. We had an old sofa and chair in the basement and hid down there and went to sleep. We followed the war all the way with the BBC.”
Mary harbours no ill will towards co-presenter Hollywood who signed a deal worth a reported £1.2million to join Channel 4. “I would always stand by him,” she insists.
“Paul and I had our differences about what was important to us but he is a brilliant bread maker and I admired him a lot.”