As the age-old saying goes when it comes to sweet treats: a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips.
But British Bake Off judge Prue Leith has found her own solution: eat nothing but cake.
Dame Prue, 84, says she simply skips breakfast and lunch so she doesn’t gain weight.
An additional advantage is that there is just enough room for a delicious glass of wine, she says.
However, there’s a catch: she’s only on the pie diet for the time it takes each year to film the Channel 4 series.
Dame Prue Leith has revealed she is on an all-pie diet during the Great British Bake Off film
Prue Leith with fellow judge Paul Hollywood and Bake Off presenters Alison Hammond and Noel Fielding
Speaking to The Today Podcast, Dame Prue said: ‘Looking at a cake makes me fat so I don’t eat breakfast, I don’t eat lunch, I just eat cake and that’s the worst diet in the world.
“But I only do it twenty days a year or something like that.
‘I don’t avoid dinner and by the time I think about dinner I calculate exactly how many calories I’ve put into my body during the day and there’s usually enough calories left over for a glass of wine, so that’s my dinner.
‘I have cake, pie and then a glass of wine, but that’s not every day, that’s two days a week.’
Her comments come as Bake Off nears the end of its contract with cash-strapped broadcaster Channel 4, eight years after the show defected there from the BBC for £25 million.
After the upcoming series, which starts filming in three months, it will have to be renewed – and that will likely lead to a bidding war.
Television insiders suggest that fierce competition from rivals including ITV and Netflix could mean the show – which pits amateur bakers against each other on a weekly basis – becomes too expensive for Channel 4. Bosses at ITV are said to think it would be a perfect programme. are for them to have.
But Channel 4 insiders say they can ‘throw all their money at it’ because Bake Off and Gogglebox are the only programs actually guaranteed to attract more than a million viewers.
A television source said: ‘Bake Off is one of the biggest shows on television and is not only great for ratings, it also has huge commercial potential.
“There are all kinds of opportunities for product placement and sponsorship, so while it won’t be cheap to buy, it could ultimately be a lucrative purchase.”
Love Productions, which makes Bake Off, dumped the BBC in 2016 after rejecting demands for more money.
Channel 4 swooped in and paid a whopping £25 million for the series. But the move was unpopular with some of the cast: original presenters Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc quit in disgust, as did national treasure Dame Mary Berry, who was a judge.
Talks between Love Productions and Channel 4 are believed to have started several weeks ago, with a new three-series deal up for grabs. Netflix has aired previous series of Bake Off around the world, but ITV has emerged as the most likely destination if Channel 4 is forced to pull out of the talks.
Speaking to The Today Podcast, Dame Prue said: ‘Looking at a cake makes me fat so I don’t eat breakfast, I don’t eat lunch, I just eat cake and that’s the worst diet in the world’
Channel 4 has been rocked by a massive drop in television advertising, with up to 200 jobs at the broadcaster at risk.
But in 2016 it could have snatched Bake Off from the BBC after the company’s bosses said financial demands from Love Productions made the program ‘unaffordable’.
Bake Off, broadcast by Channel 4 in 2021, had 7 million viewers, up from a record high of 9.2 million the year before.
But in 2023, only 4.38 million viewers watched the series finale.
The show, now judged by Paul Hollywood and Dame Prue, and presented by Noel Fielding and Alison Hammond, launched on the BBC in 2010.