Day the drug cops targeted Mary Berry... for carrying a bag of f lour!
WITH her warm smile and genteel ways, it’s hard to believe police might ever have cause to question Mary Berry – unless it’s about the recipe for her latest lemon drizzle cake.
But it has now emerged there was a time when the cookery queen, 83, found herself on the drugs squad’s radar.
In fact, as she confessed last night, it ended up with her being arrested and thrown in the cells in the US.
Looking at the details, it’s easy to see how things boiled over.
First of all Miss Berry turned up at an airport in the States with a suitcase full of plastic bags containing flour and sugar.
Then, when probed by security about whether she planned to make money from the suspicious-looking white powder, she told them she had already ‘agreed a fee’.
Her revelation came on last night’s Graham Norton show.
She said: ‘I was arrested 25 years ago. I was going to the US to do some cookery demonstrations and was worried that there might be problems so I weighed out all the ingredients – flour, sugar – and put them all in little plastic bags.’ The star said the sniffer dogs ‘made a beeline’ for her when she arrived at the airport.
‘Suddenly I was surrounded by uniformed people and my assistant and I were put in separate cells.’
The former Great British Bake Off judge described the experience as ‘alarming’, before adding: ‘When I was asked if I was going to make money from the stuff, I said, “I do and my fee has already been agreed”.’
Drug smuggling is a federal crime in the US and sentences can range from 26 to 46 years in prison.
TV presenter Claudia Winkleman, who also appeared on the BBC1 chat show, joked that Miss Berry had a ‘much darker side’. The pair were promoting their new BBC reality show, Britain’s Best Home Cook, which begins on May 3.
In the style of The Apprentice, ten contestants will share a house in Herefordshire for the duration of the programme.
And similar to the way Alan Sugar takes the losing team into the boardroom to decide who to fire, those on thin ice in the new show will have to wow the judges in a ‘cook off’ to prevent themselves being booted out.
The cooks will battle it out over eight weeks to impress Miss Berry and her fellow judges – presenter and greengrocer Chris Bavin, 38, and award-winning chef Dan Doherty, 33. Participants include a wine consultant, a children’s A&E nurse and a farmer.
Judges set two challenges for the contestants – to cook a home favourite and an improvised dish around a single ingredient.
The weakest cooks will then face the elimination round and one will be evicted from the competition.