Perkins heard about Bake Off move on Facebook
SUE PERKINS discovered The Great British Bake Off was leaving the BBC after seeing the news on a friend’s Facebook page.
The presenter, 47, declined to “go with the dough” and move with the programme to Channel 4, along with her fellow host, Mel Giedroyc, and Mary Berry, the show’s judge, following a breakdown in talks last year.
She has now said she was not told directly that the corporation had lost the show.
“I learnt the news from a friend’s Facebook page,” Perkins said. “For a while it was really painful but everybody has to do as they see best. It was seven years of my life and it had seen me through highs and lows.”
In the interview with the Observer, she spoke fondly of her time with the programme. “For three months [a year] I would go off to a stately home, play whist with Mary Berry, see all my friends and meet some really great bakers,” she said. “Then, when it was all done, I’d go off on holiday.” The news that the hit baking show was moving to Channel 4 emerged last year after the BBC failed to pay £25 million a year to keep it.
Love Productions, the company behind Bake Off, made the announcement last September after “more than a year of exhaustive negotiations”. The revamped programme will restart later this year after the BBC waived a legal clause preventing Channel 4 from showing it until 2018.
Prue Leith will replace Berry alongside Paul Hollywood, while Noel Fielding and Sandi Toksvig will take over as presenters. Perkins added: “They are all more than capable of turning out a brilliant show. The issue is chemistry.”
The BBC declined to comment.