Sue Perkins nearly quit Bake Off BEFORE Channel 4 move
Sue Perkins has revealed that she briefly considered quitting The Great British Bake Off some time before its headline-grabbing move to Channel 4.
In a wide-ranging and candid interview with BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, Sue said that a trip to Tibet to film a travel documentary left her questioning what was most important in her life.
'It was a really sweet show, and I loved the crew, and I loved the director, and I loved the bakers, but I sort of loved all of it,' Sue told host Kirsty Young.
'There was one point where I did think, "Can I do this forever?" which is when I had come back from my travels [filming The Mekong River with Sue Perkins].
'Four days before I came into the Bake Off tent, I had been with the first family of the Mekong in Tibet,' she said. 'They had no electricity and no running water, and they would have yak butter and barley, and that's all they ate, and they would meditate and be in bed by six.
'And then four days later, I was in a tent where somebody was crying because they couldn't find the packet of marron glacé. And I did think, "How can I rationalise these two worlds?"'
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But Sue added that she is missing being a part of Bake Off. Filming's currently taking place for the first series on Channel 4 with original judge Paul Hollywood, new judge Prue Leith and new co-hosts Sandi Toksvig and Noel Fielding.
'I miss it, and I also wish it well. There's no point in rancour,' she said.
Sue added that the story of her exit from Bake Off, along with friend and long-time collaborator Mel Giedroyc, was 'a complicated brew... there were lots of things going on' – although she did joke that they'd run out of baking puns by the time their seven series hosting the show for the BBC had come to an end.
Sue also told Kirsty about the very first time she met Mel, saying she was 'compelled' by her and had vivid memories of her bright pink Doc Martens and her 'hearty laugh'.
'I just knew we'd know each other forever from that moment, really,' Sue added. 'People talk a lot about falling in love, and romantic relationships. But they don't talk about platonic friendships, and how powerful they can be.
'You know, we have seen each other through highs and lows, and above and beyond our working relationship, we are friends and we love each other and we want the best for each other.
'Our partnership looks inward – we look at each other and we never look outwards. It's like two twins in a cot, just marvelling, just *marvelling* at each other!
'I think sometimes that's our greatest strength and our greatest failing, because I think if we'd been more able to sort of see the wood for the trees, then I think our careers would have gone a bit smoother.'
And in an affectionate look back at their two-decade partnership and friendship, Sue revealed that she and Mel were often in perfect synergy without even realising it.
Talking about their big break in television and how 'blissfully unaware' they were of the '"jazz hands" element of television' in the face of 'very well put-together' people around them, Sue said that at the end of their first series of Light Lunch, they were both bought Prada purses as gifts.
'I just looked at this Prada purse, and I just thought, "Who's that for?" And Mel looked at it, separately, and said "Who's that for?" And without saying anything, we both gave it to the charity shop the next day, and it was only a month later that we confessed to each other.
'That's happened a billion times in my relationship with Mel – including, of course, when everything happened with Bake Off. I didn't need to ring her and say, "What are you going to do?" because I knew what she was going to. It was merely a question of how we were going to do it.'
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