Sandi Toksvig has shared more about the personal reasons behind her decision to leave the Great British Bake Off.
The presenter first joined the hit baking show when it moved from the BBC to Channel 4 back in 2017, but stepped down after three seasons in 2020.
While the QI host claimed at the time that she was leaving to “spend more time with my other work”, she has since admitted that it was also because she “stopped having fun” while presenting Bake Off.
“I was literally standing there watching meringues dry and thinking, ‘Oh my God, my brain is atrophying’,” she told the Radio Times earlier this year.
Now, she’s revealed that there were other personal factors that contributed to her decision.
Speaking on the latest episode of the Stirring It Up podcast, the presenter and comedian told hosts Miquita and Andi Oliver that she “didn’t go into” Bake Off “for the money”, despite it being the “biggest paycheck of my life”.
“I was just getting depressed, and it’s about integrity,” she continued. “If you have that, then you can sleep. If you have integrity and you think ‘I’m doing a good thing, I’m doing a good thing for other people, I’m being good to my friends, my family’, then that’s fine. There’s no money in the world that can then take that from you.”
Sandi also echoed her previous comments about simply losing interest on the show.
“I mean, no disrespect to people, but watching meringue dry and being told how many different kinds there are, I honestly thought I was going out of my mind,” she said.
“I would ring [my wife] Deb and go ‘Hey Deb, I’m going crazy, I am going crazy’. Because a five-hour bake, which is 20 minutes on telly, is five hours long.”
Back in 2020, Bake Off judge Paul Hollywood claimed he was “surprised” and “really upset” by Sandi’s exit.
During a separate interview with Times Radio in February this year, judge Prue Leith claimed that she didn’t realise how Sandi was feeling before she quit the.
She recalled that they had a green room where they’d pass the time, explaining: “We had this wonderful selection of books, and she would [knit] little figures. So she made lots of those. She wrote a few scripts. She did a lot of other things.”
As of January this year, Sandi still hadn’t been in touch with the Bake Off team since her departure.
Matt Lucas eventually took over after Sandi, who presented for three seasons, but has since been replaced himself by Alison Hammond.
Stirring It Up is available to listen to on all podcast platforms