Now that’s a show-stopper! Paxman joins Bake Off

IN his time hosting Newsnight he might have sneered at the prospect. But Jeremy Paxman is about to don his apron and enter the Bake Off tent.

The journalist, 68, joins an eclectic lineup including comedian Russell Brand, Our Girl star Michelle Keegan and veteran US actor John Lithgow in Channel 4’s celebrity

version of the baking competition in aid of Stand Up To Cancer.

In the first episode of the Great Celebrity Bake Off, Lithgow, Brand, comedian Jon Richardson and Paralympic wheelchair racer Hannah Cockroft take on three challenges set by judges Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith, including a brownie technical bake and the ‘show-stopper’.

Brand, 4 , said his wife Laura Gallacher had been teaching him to cook. ‘My mum was always baking cakes – if only I had paid attention I could have had that knowledge,’ he said. ‘My mum also had cancer a lot when I was a kid. I paid attention to the cancer, just not to the baking.’

Other contestants in the five-part series, which begins on March 5, include actor Greg Wise, Labour MP Jess Phillips, comedian Johnny Vegas and Krishnan GuruMurthy of Channel 4 News.