‘Sometimes it feels like yesterday’
NANCY BIRTWHISTLE ON TEN YEARS SINCE WINNING THE GREAT BRITISH BAKE OFF
TEN years ago almost to the day, a technically perfect cherry cake and 36 showstopper Jaffa orange cakes helped promote Hull-born Nancy Birtwhistle to star baker in the opening episode of 2014’s The Great British Bake Off.
Little did she know it but the retired NHS practice manager and grandmother was on her way to lifting the trophy as overall winner of series five of what was then the BBC ’s hugely popular baking contest. It was drawing bumper viewing figures, and pushing sales of electric mixers and other kitchen equipment like never before, and Nancy was at the centre of it all.
A decade later, Hull City fan Nancy, who lives with her husband, Tim, in Barton upon Humber and has just celebrated her 70th birthday, looks back fondly on her time in the famous baking tent. It gave her a platform for a host of ventures that have come her way since, from speaking engagements and multiple TV appearances to the publishing of a number of books; it also made her into a household name.
Nancy, who impressed judges Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood from the off – a coffee and hazelnut Swiss roll was her very first signature ake on the show – said: “Sometimes it feels like yesterday. The end of April would have been week one and I can remember it being cold.
“Obviously we were all new to the show and no one knew each other. I’d never done any TV before and didn’t know what it was like to have cameras shoved in your face.
“No one else knew what I was doing, it was such a big secret. Even close family members didn’t know exactly where I was going or what I was going to do.
“I didn’t own an iPhone then but our phones were taken off us as soon as we arrived. I remember seeing the tent for the first time in real life, after seeing it on the TV, and it looked enormous. What you don’t see on TV are all the associated wagons and generators, because you are in the middle of nowhere.”
Nancy got on famously with her fellow bakers and thinks they only eventually lost out to her because of the pressures. “Every baker was so good, when people left it was because of their nerves, I think, because they tighten the screw every week.
“They shorten the time you are given, they make the bakes more complicated and you are getting more and more tired. I found I didn’t suffer stress that much in the tent – my stressful times were when I was at home practising.”
Nancy’s success was in some small part down to her innovatory approach to the challenges. Her husband designed a guillotine-type gadget with which she could cut those 36 identical Jaffa sponges and she employed a piece of drainpipe – “it had never been used” – to shape the cooling brandysnap that formed the roof of her Moulin Rouge showstopper cake in the final.
The series five bakers are all still in touch - they have a WhatsApp group through which they are planning a tenth anniversary reunion later in 2024 – all apart from Luis Troyano who tragically died from oesophageal cancer, aged 48, in late 2020. Nancy said: “Luis was in the final with me. He got cancer and died during Covid – he had one of those really sad restricted funerals online.
“It was really sad to lose Luis. He was another northerner [Luis hailed from Poynton, near Stockport], and everyone else was more or less southern, apart from Claire [from Trafford], who went out in the first round, and Norman [from Moray].2
Nancy had no social media presence when she went into the contest and realised she needed to remedy that quite quickly. “I got a Twitter [now X] account but I didn’t realise what I was supposed to do – I watched the numbers go up after Bake Off and then when they started to drop off, I realised you had to actually post something.”
Since then, Nancy has garnered a huge following, particularly on Instagram, where she shares planetfriendly tips and tricks on everything from growing your own produce to the best way to clean mould off your grouting. She is also a Sunday Times bestseller, having brought out five books, and has made many guest appearances on TV to spread her baking and green living advice.
She self-published her first book, Sizzle and Drizzle, after she and her agent “trudged round so many publishers in London”. Nancy said: “No one was really interested in publishing my work, I can remember getting quite despondent about it, they were saying the market was pretty saturated with baking books.”
She had 12,500 copies printed and they sold out; a revised second edition of Sizzle and Drizzle is due to come out later this year. Nancy is particularly pleased with the everyday ways she can help people live eco-friendly lives, and protect the planet – her Clean & Green guide containing 101 tips became a Sunday Times top ten best seller. A book on Green Living and a Green Gardening Handbook followed, with the Green Budget Guide the newest offering to come out of the Birtwhistle stable – and there is another in the pipeline.
A huge fan of Hull City – “my grandson has just started playing for their under-21s” – Nancy is probably most at home in her garden, where she grows a lot of her own food and cares for rescued battery hens. “I love to be out in my garden, especially at this time of year, when you start sowing a few seeds.”
Nancy recalls going out with her Bake Off buddies for her 60th. She said: “If I’m lucky, I will still be here when I’m 80. I think it’s a case of keeping going, keeping active and keeping interested.”