across the pond

Blimey! The Great British Bake Off’s New Host Accidentally Revealed the Winner Before the Finale

Photo: Channel 4

Just like a fine mousse oozing out of the bottom of a black forrest gâteau, terror emerged in late October across the pond, when new Great British Bake Off host Prue Leith accidentally tweeted out the winner of the show 12 hours too early. The situation was apprehended quickly, but the damage was already done: Her legion of Twitter followers couldn’t un-see her congratulatory words to the crowning baker — who we won’t name for you here, in the hopes the new season comes to PBS soon — and the finale, dare we say, was spoiled à la scrambled egg custard. Unsurprisingly, Leith didn’t discuss her faux pas in the immediate aftermath of the finale due to embarrassment, but she’s now opening up about how “awful” and “suicidal” she felt, which was attributed to her confusing travel schedule.

“I think that was one of the worst half an hours, that first half an hour when I realized what I had done,” she said on ITV’s This Morning. It turns out Leith was in Bhutan for a work trip, and suffered from a simple case of mixing up the time-zones. “Then as soon as it went I thought ‘oh my God’ and I went into a panic mode where I couldn’t work my phone and I didn’t know how to delete it quickly,” she continued. “I couldn’t think and in the end I just rang my trusty PA and she said, ‘I’ve already deleted it,’ and it was 89 seconds after I had done it and that was too late, it had been retweeted.” And that’s the way the cookie crumbled. Mel and Sue are not amused.

GBBO’s New Host Revealed the Winner Before the Finale