Dame Prue Leith has insisted that Sandi Toksvig was only joking when she revealed she quit the Great British Bake Off as it was boring her to tears.
The 65-year-old comedian said she departed the beloved show in 2020 after three years as it was no longer ‘fun’ and claimed her brain was ‘atrophying’ from ‘watching meringues dry’.
However, Dame Prue, 83, who judges the Channel 4 programme with Paul Hollywood, dismissed Sandi’s confession and stated that she wasn’t ‘really bored’ as they had a whale of a time in the green room.
Further rubbishing Sandi’s claim, Dame Prue revealed the broadcaster put her time off-air in between filming to good use by knitting figures, writing scripts, and pursuing other interests.
Dame Prue told Times Radio: ‘I don’t think Sandi was so bored because she and I shared a wonderful green room in this posh house, which was where we filmed Bake Off and which was in the library.
‘And so we had this wonderful selection of books and she would knit little figures and dress them beautifully. Did you know she’s a knitter? She sells [them] for charity. So she made lots of those. She wrote a few scripts. She did a lot of other things.
‘I mean, I can see that for some people as clever as Sandi watching meringue dry is perhaps a bit heavy, but I think she just liked the joke. I don’t think she was really bored.’
Dame Prue, meanwhile, said she has no plans to follow in Sandi’s footsteps and will present the show until she gets a ‘tap on the shoulder.’
She said: ‘I do still absolutely love it. I don’t want to stay so long that I fall over; I just don’t want to make a fool of myself. And I don’t want to be there beyond when I’m really enjoying it and the public like me.’
Expressing a very different sentiment last month, QI host Sandi told the Radio Times that she left Bake Off because she ‘stopped having fun’.
‘I was literally standing there watching meringues dry and thinking, “Oh my God, my brain is atrophying,”’ she said.
Since her exit from the series, Sandi who once tried to convince Suranne Jones to participate, hasn’t been tuning in to watch the Channel 4 show and puts it down to not liking cake.
However, she added: ‘If somebody makes The Great British Cheese Off, I’m in.’ This sounds like something Channel 5 in particular would be all over.
The series is now hosted by Alison Hammond (who replaced Sandi’s replacement Matt Lucas) and Noel Fielding, with Paul still judging everyone’s bakes alongside Dame Prue Leith.
Sandi may not be regularly tuning in, as she’s too busy marvelling over camemberts, but the series is still going strong and wrapped up their 14th season last year, with Matty Edgell taking the win.
The Great British Bake Off is available to stream on Channel 4.
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