Why we’ve kissed those lovely baps goodbye
Dough! Mel and Sue reveal ‘real’ reason the choux couldn’t go on: they’d run out of puns
MOST fans assumed that Great British Bake Off presenters Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins were taking a principled stand when they refused to follow the smashhit show to Channel 4.
But today the pair jokingly reveal the real reason they walked away from the series after seven hugely successful years on the BBC: they exhausted their store of trademark double entendres.
Speaking exclusively to today’s Event magazine – and in their first joint interview since quitting – Mel quipped: ‘We’d run out of puns. Seven years of making puns about cobs, baps, meringues. To be honest, we’d started to recycle some.’
The show is moving after Channel 4 outbid the BBC for the rights to broadcast the next series and Sue, 47, admitted that they would miss it, saying: ‘Round about late spring we will be like, “Can you imagine what they’re doing now?”
‘It’s probably bread week, or about the time I would be hovering over 40 Viennese whirls and making some kind of tortuous, horrific pun.’
But she said they would look back on Bake Off with fondness. ‘It was a playground, enjoyed with fantastic bakers and mates.
‘We had no script, we were given the latitude to just look after and hang out with the bakers in whatever way we saw fit. It does sting sometimes that we’re not doing it any more, and of course it’s really sad, but we made our decision and we made it together.’
And there is no ill feeling towards Prue Leith, the veteran food expert almost certain to replace Mary Berry as a judge on the show. Mel, 48, said: ‘I’m really glad it’s someone with her kudos and experience. It’s a very good choice. She’ll be great.’