Former ‘Great British Bake Off’ presenter Sue Perkins has admitted she was considering quitting the show long before last year’s Channel 4 controversy kicked off.
Over the summer, Sue announced that she and presenting partner Mel Giedroyc would not be sticking with ‘Bake Off’ when it made the jump to Channel 4, out of loyalty to the BBC.
However, Sue has now confessed that the thought of leaving had already played on her mind years earlier, when a trip to Tibet made her reconsider her priorities.
Opening up to presenter Kirsty Young on Radio 4’s ‘Desert Island Discs’, she explained: “Four days before I came into the ‘Bake Off’ tent, I had been with the first family of the Mekong in Tibet.
“They had no electricity and no running water, and they would have yak butter and barley, and that’s all they ate, and they would meditate and be in bed by six.
“And then four days later, I was in a tent where somebody was crying because they couldn’t find the packet of marron glacé. And I did think, ‘How can I rationalise these two worlds?’”
Mel and Sue have since been replaced on ‘Bake Off’ by new unlikely double act Sandi Toksvig and Noel Fielding, while Prue Leith is stepping in to take over from Mary Berry, who also chose to stay put at the BBC.
Since their ‘Bake Off’ exit Mel and Sue have fronted ‘Let’s Sing And Dance For Comic Relief’, and are also reportedly being considered to co-present a reboot of ‘The Generation Game’.