OOH, SAUCY!
Mary flirts with hunky chef half her age – and even whips him with branches
ON Bake Off she garnered a reputation for her deliciously cheeky comments and penchant for pointing out ‘soggy bottoms’.
And now Mary Berry appears to be challenging Nigella Lawson for the crown of sauciest TV chef, after packing her new show with innuendos and flirting with a Swedish chef half her age.
The 82-year-old grandmother left a prewatershed audience startled last night, as she uttered naughty lines including: ‘I like a little bit of sauce.’
Yet it was her interaction with 39-yearold chef Niklas Ekstedt, who is known for his open fire cooking, that appeared most out of character for the happily-married veteran chef.
As she watched Ekstedt building a fire on her new BBC show Classic Mary Berry, she told him: ‘It’s a long time since I’ve had a man on his knees in front of me.’ Later in the episode the former Bake Off judge was seen whipping him with branches, to simulate what happens in Swedish saunas.
As they walked through a wood together, he was seen breaking a branch off a tree and explaining: ‘These leaves, this is what we use in the sauna to whip each other’, to which she replied: ‘Oh, that sounds exciting. How do you do it then?’ After whipping him twice, she quipped: ‘Oh it is quite good fun. I think I’m coming to Sweden.’
During her seven years on The Great British Bake Off, examples of Miss Berry’s innuendos included her telling a contestant that ‘it’s all in the wrist action’, and commenting to one amateur baker: ‘Oh no, you have some irregular-shaped balls.’
On another occasion she stood next to a contestant whisking egg whites and said sternly: ‘There it is looking perfectly stiff.’