Prue Leith has spoken of her disappointment at no longer being able to take leftover cake home from The Great British Bake Off tent.
The TV judge has revealed that people who work on the show are no longer allowed to take any creations made by the bakers off site, due to Covid regulations that she says “seem to have stuck” since the pandemic.
Prue admitted that there is now an “enormous” amount of bakes that are just “dumped” after filming.
Speaking at the Kite Festival in Oxfordshire (via The Telegraph), Prue said: “We are not allowed to take anything off site since Covid, because there were all sorts of Covid restrictions and it seems to have stuck.
“I think health and safety, once they get a grip of you they really hang on.
“They don’t allow us to take anything off site. So it’s dumped, I’m afraid, what’s not eaten is dumped.”
Prue explained that the show’s 100-strong crew are like “gannets” and are “all round there eating” after she and Paul Hollywood have finished judging the bakers’ efforts, but there is still a lot of waste.
“Quite often the bakers make two or three attempts at something if they haven’t done it right. There’s a lot of failures that go in the bin and lot of stuff leftover,” she said.
“I used to take it all home and give it to my neighbour’s pigs. And the pigs absolutely adored it. Every week I’d take a trunk full of cake.
“The vet said ‘look, you’ve got to stop this, because the pigs are getting too fat’.”
During the pandemic, Bake Off managed to film within Covid restrictions by forming a production bubble, whereby all the judges, hosts, contestants and staff lived together at a hotel during filming.
The show is set to return to Channel 4 later in the year, with new co-presenter Alison Hammond joining Noel Fielding at the helm, following the departure of Matt Lucas.