Not for the first time, Giedroyc makes me snort with laughter. Interviewers have often said that talking to her feels like talking to a friend, but in my case – full disclosure – it genuinely is: she was in the year above me at school in Oxford, and (she having taken a gap year) my peer on the same university course.
In Cambridge she joined the Footlights, where she met her lifelong collaborator, Sue Perkins. The pair spent their 20s on the comedy circuit, before landing a gig as the presenters of Channel 4’s daytime show Light Lunch. It lasted a couple of years, after which Giedroyc stepped back from showbusiness to raise a family (she and her husband, Ben, a television director, have two daughters aged 19 and 17). But in 2010 Giedroyc and Perkins were approached to host a new BBC baking competition.
“The job was like a gift but we didn’t think so at the time,” she says. “I remember phoning Sue regularly saying, ‘Don’t panic, no one’s going to see the show, there won’t be another series’, because we thought ‘Hang on, once we were cutting-edge performers at Frome Arts Centre with things to say about the world, and now we’re in a tent discussing cakes.’”
Giedroyc’s predictions were completely off – the show exploded in popularity (in 2015 and 2016, its last two years on BBC One, it was the most-watched programme on British television) and turned its presenters into household names. But in 2017 the show defected to Channel 4 and Giedroyc, Perkins and judge Mary Berry all quit out of loyalty to the BBC. The BBC rewarded them with numerous shows, but none has ever hitched her star again to such a phenomenon. Does Giedroyc regret leaving?
“We’d start filming the show in April, so I’d be lying if I didn’t say [at that time of year] I have a fleeting feeling of ‘Ah, I wish I were in the tent.’ But I hope we set a good tone. In series one we fought for the show to be kind and without that it wouldn’t be what it is today. But I don’t want to overinflate what we did – the show is bigger than us and if it has interesting, strong bakers it will always be great.”
She and Perkins (with whom she hopes to tour next year) are still close to Berry, 86, once inviting her to join them clubbing in Ibiza. “We thought it would be really funny. She was slightly crisp with us. She said, ‘I’ve already done that.’” It turned out Berry and her family had all visited Pacha nightclub. “I thought maybe they’d been for afternoon tea, but it turned out they’d arrived about 1am. But then Mary’s properly old-school. During Bake Off, she was always going to bed later than me. She’s got real party grit.”
