28 April 2024 , 08:00
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Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc are one of the nation's favourite presenting duos - but one heartbreaking experience nearly destroyed their friendship.
The iconic pair got their big break writing for French and Saunders before setting out on their own with Channel 4's Late Lunch. The Great British Bake Off on the BBC followed, becoming a juggernaut success of a show which the pair hosted for six years.
Mel and Sue had been firm pals from the moment they met as students at Cambridge University more than three decades ago. They became part of the institution's famous Footlights comedy troupe before heading off to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to showcase their own material.
But at one point in their early 30s, Sue feared the friendship could be 'destroyed' when their lives went separate ways. Mel, 55, had two daughters, Florence and Vita, with her TV director husband in the early '00s, while a growth found on Sue's pituitary gland meant she couldn't have children.
The Great British Bake Off was a runaway success (BBC/Love Productions/Tom Graham)"We live in a time and place where we think everything is possible," the star previously told Good Housekeeping. "I don't know if I would have gone onto have children. But as soon as someone says you can't have something, you want it more than anything."
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"When Mel had her first child I thought: 'This is an experience I won't have or share'," said Sue, 54. "'You've gone somewhere I can't go'. You think it is going to destroy something but actually it hasn't destroyed anything - we have very different lives and different experiences now."
Sue, who was in a relationship with TV presenter Anna Richardson for seven years until 2021, felt 'lucky' the growth was not cancerous. "I'm lucky that it's benign so it's not in itself a worrying thing. Sometimes it's big and makes me mad, and sometimes it's small and is in the background. Sometimes it screws up my hormones. I have various tests now to make sure the side effects aren't too onerous."
Sue split from partner Anna in 2021 after seven years togetherMel and husband Ben experienced financial woes in the late '00s, with their high mortgage leaving them facing the prospect of bankruptcy. "We only bought it because the bank lent us a stupid amount of money - we didn't have that money, it didn't exist," she said. "We had to sell our house very, very quickly and we moved into a tiny flat we rented and put all our stuff in storage."
The presenter said she only took the Bake Off job for the money and both her and Sue spent it first series fearing they had committed 'career suicide'. "We were thinking: 'Well, that's the end of our careers'," Mel told the Guardian in 2022. "'That was the flattest, twee-est, most boring thing we've ever done. Who wants to look at cakes?'"
The pair were delighted to be proved wrong - their laid-back presenting style formed the perfect recipe with expert judges Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry and viewers were smitten. After four series on BBC2 Bake Off was moved to BBC1 and offscreen the show was credited with a sharp rise in sales of baking ingredients and accessories. Nadiya Hussein, Candice Brown and John Whaite are among its most successful contestants.
Sue Perkins is a guest on Channel 4's Sunday Lunch today, 9.30am until 12.30pm