Former The Great British Bake Off presenter Sue Perkins has admitted she is not keen on cake.
The comedian, broadcaster and writer said that despite co-presenting the hit show for six years, cake is not her “go to”.
She said people often offer her cake they have made and then ask for her opinion of it – and she has to remind them she was never a judge on Bake Off.
Addressing an audience at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, Perkins said: “Do I bake cakes? No.”
Asked what her favourite cake is, she said: “It is going to be a Mary Berry… I say her lemon drizzle tray bake is par excellence.”
But pausing for thought, Perkins added: “I am going to say this, I don’t really like cake. I don’t mind it, I’ve eaten a couple of tonnes of it.
“I can sense it’s made with love and I can appreciate it. It’s not my ‘go to’, but if I had to, Mary’s lemon drizzle, unbelievable.”
Perkins and her comedy partner Mel Giedroyc presented Bake Off – alongside judges Berry and Paul Hollywood – on the BBC until it moved to Channel 4 in 2017.
At the festival, she discussed with host Emma Freud her new autobiography, East Of Croydon, in which she writes about her adventures across southern Asia.
Perkins said that during those travels, she was offered all sorts of strange things to eat, such as deep-fried spiders and fish flavoured milkshakes.
“They used to have it on Bake Off as well because you’d be doing a book signing and people would say, ‘My mum makes a wonderful lemon drizzle’,” Perkins said.
“They would then delve into a bag for so long and at the bottom of the bag there would be a thing wrapped in foil.
“You would have to eat it as they watched you, then judge it, even though I’d have to say this again, we were never judges.
“I will always eat your cake but don’t ask me to pass comment on the texture because I never had that role.
“People are always offering me food, whether its half-way around the world or here. I’m too polite, I was not brought up to reject any comestibles.”
Perkins was asked whether she had ever considered entering politics.
“I think it would kill me, I don’t think I would have the physical ability to distance myself from what’s happening,” she said.
“I think to be a good politician you have to be vested in your own community and you have to work with those people.
“I think politics should be a vocation and to have so visibly gone and pursued the trivial and selfish for so long and then to suddenly get into politics, I think would rightly be seen as a sort of sham move.
“I am political, not necessarily so party-political now, and I think those lines are really changing for quite a lot of people.
“There are some things I will never stop banging a drum for, ever.”
