The Great British GIGGLE Off! Victoria Wood and Lulu reveal the madcap antics that went on in Comic Relief's Celebrity Bake Off
Oh, these celebs are so impeccably connected. When Lulu needed someone to teach her how to bake a cake in a hurry, she reached for the phone and hollered for help, in a very vocal Lulu style.
Did she call a sister, or an auntie, or some neighbour who knows one end of a Kenwood mixer from the other? No, she called a master baker, who’d helped out when a friend of a friend was having a birthday cake made for Elton John’s son Zachary. As you do in the circles in which Lulu moves.
‘This guy had done him a cake in the shape of a Stormtrooper from Star Wars and it had been just perfect. I thought if anyone could give me a crash course in baking, he could. So I called him and he came round. I knew he’d be fabulous, and I’m very good at taking direction, so it was completely fine.’
This year's charity Bake Off sees a host of comedians and actors take to the famous kitchen
Quite how you can have got to the age of 66 and never baked a cake will be beyond many, but Lulu insists that she hadn’t. ‘I might have helped my mum make a banana cake when I was little, but me actually baking? Nah!’ she says.
Until she signed up for the Comic Relief celebrity version of Bake Off, that is. Yes, the Celeb Bake Off – one of the modern jewels in the charity calendar – is back, with all manner of unlikely celebrities lining up to turn the seemingly simple process of rustling up a few traybakes into comedy gold.
Lulu, known for her singing career rather than her shortbread, is one of 16 willing volunteers this year, joining a veritable Who’s Who of the British entertainment biz with her whisk. The comedy world is heavily represented by Joanna Lumley, Jennifer Saunders, Dame Edna, Victoria Wood and David Mitchell.
Presenters Chris Moyles, Gok Wan, Jameela Jamil and Jonathan Ross are taking part. So too is uber-Wag Abbey Clancy, former PM’s wife Sarah Brown, fashionista Alexa Chung and Fonejacker creator and actor Kayvan Novak.
Singer Lulu says her first bake was a success...but it did take her five hours to complete
The heats have already been filmed, with the group divided into groups of four. The star baker from each group goes forward to the grand final, which will be shown on Red Nose Day night on 13 March. Is Lulu one of the four? She won’t divulge that but given the hoots of laughter that accompany her account of taking part, we can assume not.
‘Well, it’s all top secret,’ she admits. ‘But let’s just say Mary Berry doesn’t need to worry too much about her crown. And no, I really don’t think anyone is going to be asking me to do a book on my baking tips.’
Did she drop a flan on the floor, or a fingernail into a soufflé? ‘Not quite, but I can say I wasn’t as cocky about how easy it would be once it was underway.’
She says initially she was quite relaxed about the whole thing, agreeing to take part because she thought it was for a good cause.
‘The problem was I’d never watched the Celebrity Bake Off before. I just thought, “Load of celebs. It’s a bit of a joke. No one takes it seriously.” I’m also quite a cocky person, quite full of myself. I go to the ballet and think “I could do that.” I watch Strictly and think “I could do that.” Then the instructions arrived telling us what we had to prepare for, and I freaked out.’ Even getting her new professional friend in to show her how it’s done didn’t help that much.
‘My first cake was a success – but it took five hours to bake, and you only get two during the competition.’
There was, you sense, a point to prove too. Lulu is a grandmother these days and, it seems, quite a competitive one. She has two grandchildren – Bella, four, and Teddy who’s two. Her grandchildren (who call her Nanna Lu) also have another granny though, who’s a whizz in the kitchen.
‘Granny Annie made Bella an amazing cake for her first birthday. And for her fourth birthday every kid had a biscuit in the shape of a 4. I can’t do any of that. I always cheat and buy the stuff.’ So did she end up in tears during filming? That seems to be de rigueur on Bake Off.
‘Well I did feel like crying,’ she admits. ‘You can’t help but take it seriously when you’re in there, and you don’t want to look completely stupid.’
Having had a sneak preview of some of the first heat, we can reveal that Lulu is by no means the most clueless celeb in the kitchen when it comes to baking, even if she does have trouble telling her egg yolks from her egg whites. Indeed, so inept are the first clutch of celebrity bakers that you do wonder if some of them even have kitchens at home.
Take the lovely Joanna Lumley, for instance, who kicks off with the hardly comforting phrase, ‘I wonder if that is a tablespoon. I think I’ll just guess what a tablespoon is.’ How was she feeling as filming started? Terrified, pretty much.
‘I watched Bake Off last night and suddenly noticed Mary Berry’s gimlet eyes and Paul’s unsmiling blue eyes and quite honestly I couldn’t sleep,’ she admits. Her showstopper cake is revealed as a homage to the northern lights, with the aurora borealis depicted in spun sugar. Since this is a woman who gets her cocoa mixed up with coffee (leading to an interesting sort of chocolate cake), we can be assured an entertaining ride with this one.
Victoria Wood, says she was bemused to find herself in the same heat as fashion writer Alexa Chung
Then there’s Jennifer Saunders, who is super-competitive but admits, ‘I think I can make something that looks alright but they’re not really going to want to swallow it.’
She may go on to be accused of being the class swot, but we must point out that the bar really isn’t set too high. She wants to sabotage Lulu’s efforts, wondering if she should turn her oven down, and seems to be determined to get Mary Berry drunk. Vodka icing anyone? You heard it here first.
Completing the first week’s line up – and how! – is Dame Edna, who’s come out of retirement for this contest and arrives, clad in fuchsia and feathers, bemoaning the ‘ugly’ aprons they have to wear. ‘I’d have liked more colour,’ she complains.
Does Dame Edna bake? Of course she doesn’t. ‘I’ve decided not to measure the ingredients,’ she reveals, plunging two hands full of gaudy jewels into the bowl (she can’t take them off ‘because you don’t know who you can trust in here’). ‘Instinct, which has played such a major role in my career, is going to serve me well in the kitchen,’ she promises.
It’s hilarious, particularly because her showstopper is the Sydney Opera House complete with meringue topping. Ever seen a perfectly flat meringue? Or a cake that seems to be actually welded onto the tin? You may want to brace yourself. And who else could garnish some slop on a plate with a buttercup?
Amid the chaos are some true revelations, though. Another celeb who took it all surprisingly seriously was comedienne and actress Victoria Wood, who was most bemused to find herself in the same heat as fashion writer and ex-model Alexa Chung. It’s safe to say it’s the first time the two have been lumped together.
Other celebs taking part. From left to right: Jonathan Ross, Mary Berry, Zoe Sugg, Paul Hollywood, Abbey Clancy, Gok Wan and Mel Giedroyc
‘She’s a very beautiful person,’ admits Victoria, deadpan. ‘And I don’t know that many beautiful people.’ Did they hate each other? ‘I didn’t know what to make of her at first. I was suspicious when she did the whole, “I don’t know what I’m doing here; I don’t even have an oven” thing, but actually she was very down to earth. We had quite a laugh.’
To a point. Victoria admits she didn’t go into the contest playing for laughs. At least not cake-dropped-on-the-floor laughs. ‘I didn’t want to be the comedy contestant, like Ann Widdecombe on Strictly. I did take it quite seriously. I’m quite an organised person so I had everything laid out beforehand.
And it sounds as if Victoria could be one to watch. She admits she’s been a keen baker since her children were little. They got homemade birthday cake every year.
‘My daughter got one in the shape of some platform trainers and I once did my son a Thomas The Tank Engine Cake with a bridge and railway track and everything, and a man standing looking over the bridge.’ Gosh. This sounds positively professional. ‘Well, no. The man did look as if he was about to commit suicide,’ she points out.
She too was a bit freaked by the instructions that arrived a few weeks before filming commenced. ‘I did think, “Oh Lord, this is all very proper.” They tell you that you have to come up with your own recipe, you can’t get it from a book. I thought, “Jeez, I’m not an inventor.”’
Doing it was such fun. I can’t tell you how happy I was bouncing around that tent. It’s all very jolly - Victoria Wood
Her instructions declared that she had to make a cake using a vegetable, which made for some very interesting practice sessions. ‘First I tried using a courgette,’ says Victoria, ‘but that was repellent, so I turned to beetroot which is good in cakes because of the sugar. And it gives a lovely pink colour.’ She ended up making – wait for it! – a cake of her own face.
‘Well, I say it’s me, but it’s me as one of my early characters, Kimberley [the beret-wearing teenager], with a yellow beret on. I thought it would be more recognisable.’
Victoria is a bit of a Bake Off addict and says there’s something about the programme’s format that just gives a feel-good boost.
‘Doing it was such fun. I can’t tell you how happy I was bouncing around that tent. You’ve got much better equipment than you have at home when you’re in a weeny corner of the kitchen all jammed up against the sink. It’s all very jolly.’
On a more serious note, she says actually being in the kitchen cooking for the family has helped her overcome her well-documented issues with food. She’s talked in the past of her struggles with weight and binge eating. One might assume hurling herself into a world of cake was a temptation too far. She says the opposite is true.
‘I actually think it’s a help. I don’t think anyone becomes a compulsive eater because they bake. I’m not sure anyone would bake a cake and then scoff it themselves. Compulsive eating tends to be a solitary thing, whereas baking leads you to share. There’s something lovely about it, and it’s about normalising food.’
Obviously it’s an incredibly complicated issue, but she feels strongly that a lot of food problems are about habit, and a lot are about the types of food you eat. She tries to avoid chemicals in food, and says her problems have ‘diminished a huge amount but are always there. I think it’s the same for people who give up smoking or drinking. It does linger,’ she admits. She cheers on programmes like Bake Off for ‘demystifying food. The people are incredibly skilled and we can all learn from it.’
There’s probably a place for debating the evils of sugar elsewhere, but the emphasis on this celeb-strewn Bake Off will be on the belly-laugh quota. There will also be space for some sympathy for the poor souls who had to clear up the kitchen after this lot had departed.
The Great Comic Relief Bake Off, Wednesday, 8pm, BBC1.
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