‘I’ll never borrow too much from the bank again’

Presenter Mel Giedroyc, 55, on drinking with Rylan, getting it wrong at Glastonbury and losing her home

Mel Giedroyc, 55, rose to fame when she and comedy partner Sue Perkins, who she had met at Cambridge, landed the hit Channel 4 series Light Lunch in 1997. Since then she has worked as an actor and presenter, working on shows including The Great British Bake Off and Unforgivable. She is married to Ben Morris, a former director and drama teacher, and they share daughters Florence, 22, and Vita, 20.

BEST of TIMES BEST CHILDHOOD MEMORY?

One of my best memories ever was a recurring one, which was going to the pantomime at our local theatre in Leatherhead, Surrey. I remember one time I was actually sick, I was so excited. And the best bit was when the Dame used to call all the children to come up on stage. As an incorrigible show-off, I would run as fast as my tiny legs would carry me and, I’m ashamed to admit, elbow my way to the front. The feeling of being up there and kinship with the people on stage was very enticing.

BEST DAY OF YOUR LIFE ?

It was two days: the births of my daughters without a shadow of a doubt. They arrived very painfully but, my God, what a feeling to have them in the world. It’s so mad, that feeling when they arrive and it’s like, “Oh, hello! I know you!”

BEST CAREER MOMENT?

The feeling of doing an Edinburgh Festival show with Perks [her nickname for Sue Perkins] in 1995 and having a “sold out” sign on the venue and knowing that we’d done it all ourselves. We’d borrowed the money to do it from Perks’ dad that year. Bless his soul, Bert Perkins came forward and lent us the cash to do it. We paid him back every single penny. That felt pretty darn good.

BEST BAKE OFF MEMORY?

Being literally helpless with laughter – when you’re just crying and you can’t get a word out – when Dame Mary Berry showed us that she’d defaced Paul Hollywood’s car with a marker pen as a gag, and then realised that it was indelible ink. Oh, my God. It was just the three of us. I’m afraid to say there was a moment where I just had to run behind a tree, because I just thought I was going to have an accident. I can’t tell you what a great moment that was. As for Paul’s anger level, he took it to 11, but you can never really be cross with Mary Berry, can you? And Paul had a real twinkle, but his car is a big part of him.

BEST MOMENT ON ‘UNFORGIVABLE’?

I’m really proud of this show. We had Rylan on this season, and I think he’s a supremely gifted and wonderful individual. We were arsing about on camera and the audience loved him and then the fire alarm went off. The crew cleared everyone out of the building and we were told to muster at some point outside and Rylan goes, “Shall we go down the pub?” So we all went down and for 45 minutes there were people running around trying to find us and bring us back in. It’s quite unforgivable. You’re wasting crew time; you’re wasting everyone’s time. But it felt very much in the spirit of the show.

BEST ADVICE YOU’VE RECEIVED?

When I would tell my dad, “God, it’s going really badly,” he’d always say, “If you’re in a situation where things are really difficult and you just don’t know what to do, imagine the person that you’re with, who may be the cause of it, without any clothes on.” It works every time. It’s very strong. This is from the man who was in Siberia for two years of his childhood. He and his mother and two sisters were deported [from Poland] in 1940 by the Russians, who considered them enemies of the people, and his father was imprisoned, tortured and assassinated. They only survived thanks to my amazing grandmother.

BEST PERSONAL TRAIT?

I’m an eternal optimist. Maybe it’s the nature of the youngest child in a big family [Mel has three siblings] to be the one flying the flag in a way.

WORST of TIMES WORST CHILDHOOD MEMORY?

It was when I was seven, in 1975. I had a den underneath a laurel bush in the garden that was my place where select friends could come and gather. I had this sudden realisation that my parents were mortal, and I just thought, “This is absolutely terrible.” All children go through it, I think: I remember my girls howling and saying, “You’re going to die.”

WORST MOMENT OF YOUR LIFE?

After my first daughter was born there was a high point, and then two days later, obviously, the hormones crashed. And I remember looking at her lying in her Moses basket and thinking, “That’s it. I’m gonna die.” I realised my own mortality. Probably a lot of people have that when they have a child; you suddenly think, “Okay, I’ve brought in a little bit of a next generation here so it’s time for me to go to the ledge at some point and pop it like a sad old lemon.”

WORST FINANCIAL DECISION?

Buying a house we couldn’t afford in the early Noughties and then not sleeping for three years and then losing the house. It was bad. We had a terrible financial crash but we got back on our feet, luckily, and – the eternal optimist speaks – we knew that we had the safety net of our lovely family. We were never going to be out on the streets. I will never, ever borrow too much money from the bank again. We rented a really lovely little Seventies flat – we paid the landlord in cash in a layby on the A1 – we got rid of tons of our stuff at a boot fair because we had nowhere to put it and the rest we put in storage with my in-laws. It was chastening, but we realised that we were fine: all four of us were okay. It was going to be alright. It was a first world problem.

WORST CELEBRITY ENCOUNTER?

There was an absolutely chillingly embarrassing one when I was presenting The One Show from Glastonbury. And I thought, “I’m quite edgy. I’m a bit rock and roll –” I’m clearly not, but we were having [DJ and music producer] Mark Ronson on the show. And before we went on air, I bowled up to him and said, “Mark, your dad means so much to me. Your dad is like the spirit of rock and roll – his work with David Bowie, his incredible skill.” And he looked at me slightly glacially, I’m not going to lie, and said something like, “My dad was a music manager.” And I was like, “I thought your dad was Mick Ronson, Bowie’s fabled guitarist on Ziggy Stardust, from Hull.” Mark has an American accent and I just thought the Hull accent probably got ironed out somewhere along the way.

WORST CAREER DECISION?

Deciding to knock Light Lunch on the head in 1998. This may just be a bit rose-tinted, looking back on the whole thing, but I think we actually had a really good show on our hands. It had a cult following among students, prisoners and breastfeeding mothers. But we decided, “We’ve done this for two years; let’s do something else.” And actually we probably should have carried on a bit longer. I think it had more legs in it. And we were only 30! But hey-ho, life goes on. We’ve had ups and downs but we’ve been extremely lucky. To have Bake Off happen in our forties was a very, very, very special thing. Especially since I’d had a big old financial crash. I thought: “Okay, so I’ll probably put the career to bed. That’s not going to happen again.”

WORST PERSONAL TRAIT?

Also blind optimism. I’m the person who is relentlessly jolly at six in the morning; the person you want to punch in the face when you’re going to the airport at 5am. I’m the one going, “Come on! Let’s find the gate! What a lovely day! Isn’t this brilliant?” And that’s swiftly followed around 11am by the worst sense of humour failure in the entire universe. I think moderation would be a very good mistress at some point.

Unforgivable is on Tuesdays at 10pm on Dave

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