Prue Leith couldn’t sleep for days after she accidentally let slip who had won the ‘Great British Bake Off’.
The 77-year-old show judge hit the headlines last month when she announced on Twitter that Sophie Faldo had become the new champion of the show – 12 hours before the episode had aired on television screens – because she was on holiday in Bhutan and had got confused over the time zone.
But, although most people found it funny, she was mortified over her social media blunder and felt like she had swiped the limelight away from Sophie because everyone was obsessed with her error.
Speaking to the Daily Mirror newspaper, she said: "Channel 4 were great. Everyone was – Love Productions, the production company and Paul – they all emailed me and said: ‘Basically it is the sort of thing I could have done, don’t worry about it too much.’ Everybody was wonderful but it was days before I could sleep properly. I still feel absolutely mortified by it. It was awful."
Prue realised her error almost instantly but was in such a fluster that she couldn’t work her phone but, luckily, her secretary had seen her blunder and managed to delete the tweet 89 seconds later.
She explained: "I congratulated Sophie and then I thought: ‘Why is no one else congratulating her? As I thought that, Emma Freud tweeted me saying; ‘Eek. It’s tonight. Delete, delete.’ And then I was in such a panic I couldn’t work my phone. I rang my secretary and she said: ‘Don’t worry, I have done it.’ … 89 seconds afterwards but of course it was too late. There was a huge amount of publicity but it was the wrong publicity. It was about my tweet. It should have been about who was the winner."
Prue Leith couldn’t sleep after GBBO blunder
