Mary Berry would’ve chosen Prue Leith as her replacement on ‘Great British Bake Off’.
The culinary queen broke hearts last year when she announced she was turning her back on the cooking series, which she fronted alongside Paul Hollywood, when the rights to the format were swiped by Channel 4 and, although she decided to leave out of "loyalty" to the BBC, she is glad bosses asked the restaurateur to take her place.
Speaking to Good Housekeeping magazine, she said: "I did seven years and loved every minute of it. But you have to go some time, don’t you?’
"It is all about the brilliant format. All the family can watch and there’s no bad language. It has continued in exactly the same format and place.
"If I could have chosen someone to take my place, and if they’d given me all the cookery writers set in a row, I would have said that Prue [Leith] would be the one.
"The others [Noel Fielding and Sandi Toksvig] I don’t know so well, but they’re all doing a good job. It’s just people get a bit crabby about the ads."
And it seems Channel 4 are impressed with Prue’s work on the show as they have decided to extend her contract – even though she accidentally revealed who’d won the most-recent series, which is pre-recorded in advance, before it aired on screens.
The 77-year-old star said at the time: "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."
Mary Berry would’ve chosen Prue Leith as her GBBO replacement
