After Dame Mary Berry and Dame Prue Leith comes Lady Caroline Waldegrave, who Hollywood says trumps her predecessors

Paul Hollywood has hailed new Bake Off judge Caroline Waldegrave as better than both Dame Mary Berry and Dame Prue Leith – because she’s a Lady.

And the master baker, who was joined by Caroline for the celebrity version of the series for Stand Up to Cancer, has now set his sights on royalty. Paul said: “We have a Lady, so she’s played the trump card from the off. From an aristocracy point of view, she’s beaten the other two.

“I’d like to see William and Kate going in after what Kate’s been through with cancer. It’d be lovely to get them. I’d love to see Princess Anne, too. I know she enjoys eating the bakes, she’d be brilliant. I’d love to see a royal or two come into the tent. That would mean a lot to a lot of people. We’ve had Dames, Ladies… That’s the next level, isn’t it? You go: Dame, Dame, Lady, Royal.”

Paul Hollywood is thrilled to have a ‘Lady’ on the programme and now wants to bag a royal ( 
Image:
Mark Bourdillon)
Caroline, whose full title is Lady Waldegrave of North Hill, has taught at Leith’s School of Food and Wine and Dudwell Cookery School for the past 40 years. Paul said she’d fitted in straight away. “Initially, there were nerves – but Caroline’s knowledge is unsurpassable. Within the first couple of hours, she’d settled right in. She was chatty and friendly and we got on straight away.

Caroline, 72, admitted that her first television experience was nerve-wracking. “I was completely terrified,” she laughed. “I was fine on the critiquing. I was just scared of getting it wrong in terms of how to present myself. Paul was incredibly kind and put me at ease right away. He told me to just be myself. It was great fun – I really loved it.” The mother of four – and grandmother of nine – says she doesn’t think that people will now recognise her in the supermarket. “I had so much make-up on, I don’t know that they would, I look completely different.” And she insisted: “Prue is still the Bake Off lady.”

Paul, Caroline and Alison have a chat with contestant Rosie Ramsey
Presenter Alison Hammond said she’d very much enjoyed working on the show with the new judge. “Prue was telling us how amazing she was, so we were really excited about meeting her and she was lovely – an absolute breath of fresh air. Most of the jokes go over her head. She’s quite innocent. I found that endearing. Caroline got on really well with the bakers. I don’t think she’s as strict as Paul. She’s a lovely addition to the family.”

Alison said the first episode, featuring family members, was an eye-opener – with husband and wife Chris and Rosie Ramsey and brother-sister due Scarlette and Stuart Douglas. “That was a really different dynamic. I’ve never seen so much banter in all my days. And it wasn’t necessarily nice banter, you know? It was arguments. There was a lot of bickering, a lot of shouting across the benches, a lot of sabotage. It was exciting. I couldn’t get a word in edgeways – unusual for me.”

The first episode on Sunday pitches Chris Ramsey into battle with his wife Rosie plus brother and sister property presenters Scarlette and Stuart DouglasAlison has told how her niece Jasmine, 13, was undergoing cancer treatment while the series was being filmed last summer. She explained: “She’s totally in remission now and doing really well. Her hair is growing back. It’s lovely, actually. She came over for Christmas and looked so, so well. It brings it home that raising funds for research is the reason people like her are here. It makes it more poignant.

“Cancer touches everybody, doesn’t it? It’s obviously touched my life, so I love doing the Stand Up to Cancer episodes. There’s so much meaning behind it.” Among the contestants to take part this year, Sarah Beeny is a breast cancer survivor while Meera Syal’s late mother had breast cancer earlier in her life, Maxine Peake lost her mum to pancreatic cancer and Gloria Hunniford lost her daughter Caron Keating to breast cancer.