Featured Image Credit: Channel 4
Topics: Great British Bake Off, Prue Leith, TV And Film, Food and Drink
Jess Hardiman
Topics: Great British Bake Off, Prue Leith, TV And Film, Food and Drink
With Great British Bake Off contestants tasked with serving up a range of bakes for the Signature, Technical and Showstopper rounds each week, there’s obviously A LOT of food knocking around in the tent.
While some of us may watch on with envy, realistically, the novelty of that sugar high is probably going to wear off fairly quickly.
Sure, it’s nice to have a little sweet treat while on the clock, but we all know that Bake Off output isn’t exactly the same as your colleague coming back to the office with a tray of doughnuts...
The bakers and their families have no doubt been surrounded by their own creations after practicing time and time again to get things right, meaning the responsibility often falls to the crew.
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Season nine star Kim-Joy Hewlett once appeared as a guest on Channel 4’s The Big Fat Quiz Of The Year, where she was asked what happens to the food after everyone’s finished up.
Hewlett replied: “The crew will eat it. They’d know the best ones, so they all descend on the bake.”
But Noel Fielding, who was a panellist on the show and has also served as a presenter on The Great British Bake Off since it moved to its new home, said there’s something else that happens to them as he revealed some insider intel.
“Do you want a juicy bit of gossip? Prue [Leith], occasionally, if there’s any cakes leftover, she takes them home for her pigs,” he said, joking: “That's her pet name for me and [former co-host] Sandi [Toksvig].”
Fielding added: “She genuinely has pigs.”
It turned out Leith didn’t actually own pigs herself, but liked to take some of the goodies home to feed to her neighbour’s animals.
Back in 2017, she told the Telegraph: “My neighbour keeps pigs, so these pigs got the most amazing cakes and bread.
“And I would spend hours taking out all the sticks. Sometimes, the showstoppers, they stick them together with cocktails sticks.”
Sadly for the pigs, however, a vet soon put a stop to that, warning that pigs shouldn’t be eating cakes.
Leith, who was forced to put the sweet – literally – gesture to an end, added: “They were already huge pigs.
“So now there’s no more cake. But one of the cameramen has pigs and his vet hasn’t said no.”
After her comments surfaced, the National Pig Association issued a cautionary statement on the matter, noting how a 2001 outbreak of food-and-mouth had spread after pigs in Northumberland were fed infected meat, in turn prompting a ban on kitchen scraps being fed to them.
“We simply cannot stress enough the risk posed to the pig industry by the feeding of waste food to pigs,” NPA chief executive Zoe Davies said at the time.
“Most commercial farmers understand this, but as Prue Leith’s comments highlight, the message still is not getting through to members of the public, including those who keep small numbers of livestock and apparently their vets.”
Tyla has reached out to Leith for comment.