Comedian Sara Pascoe has backtracked on her earlier criticism of the BBC, after accusing the corporation of having “replaced her with a younger woman” on The Great British Sewing Bee. Pascoe, 45, hosted the show from 2022 to 2025, but the latest series saw her replaced by actress Sophie Willan, 38.
Speaking to the Mirror in the aftermath, Pascoe says she would like to take back her comment, saying “I was sad” at the time. “It was me being snide, and to make a joke to make Harry Hill laugh on his podcast. I wasn't actually replaced because I was ageing myself out of sewing. The sewing audience is very happy with a middle-aged woman.”
TV is 'brutal' but comedy is a 'backbone'
Her departure, she adds, was par for the course in showbusiness. “TV is brutal, and I say that as someone who is so lucky. For stand-ups, the live circuit is the spine of our career, that's our backbone. It can't be taken away from you, but the TV stuff is that delicious cherry on top, but it can be taken away from you.”
Reflecting on her time on the show, she said: “They let me take my dog. And because Joe Lycett, when he'd hosted it, had a little bed, the presenter now gets a little bed where you could lie down, because the sewing challenges take ages. Most shows you'd have to do quite a lot of work, but they sew things for five hours and you pop in twice, so you can read a book or write a book or do your emails. And it's the opposite of Traitors. They would never ever put anyone in a coffin.”
Last One Laughing and Bob Mortimer
Talking of The Traitors, Pascoe has been as glued to the latest series as the rest of us. She says: “I was the Richard E Grant of Last One Laughing. I laughed within the first 10 minutes, and he announced that he was a Traitor. It was also Joe Lycett who was his downfall, so we have that in common.”
Pascoe was eliminated first on the inaugural series of Amazon smash hit Last One Laughing, which saw Bob Mortimer take the crown. She says: “We sometimes take people for granted, these national treasures. But aren't we lucky to have Bob Mortimer? He’s so kind too. At the Last One Laughing screening, he didn't come in and watch because he doesn't like watching himself, and it was so odd, like ‘But you're the star of this!’”
Mental health and motherhood
Pascoe lives in North London with her husband, Australian comedian Steen Raskopoulos, and their two children. She was talking to the Mirror as an ambassador for Bupa Mental Health and their Bupa Mindplace centres. She says: “I think mental health is a topic we can't talk about enough. We need to check in with each other more, especially as it gets to this time of year where some people can feel more isolated.”
“Like lots of people who grew up working class, I thought I didn't deserve therapy, or that you had to be in a really bad way. I went to therapy a lot later in life than I should have done.”
Pascoe, who is mum to sons Theodore, four, and Albie, three, struggled with her mental health during her fertility struggles. She tried to conceive for more than 10 years before welcoming her children via IVF. “It was so hard. Therapy was a lifeline. It was just so great to have someone that I could just cry for an hour that I didn't have to apologise to.”
“I know I’m not alone - my story is the same as many women my age. You might not want to mention it to people at work, because you just want to go there and cope and go home. And then you and your partner are going through something side-by-side, but might be experiencing it very differently.”
When her children were born, Pascoe struggled again because of lack of sleep. “Neither of my children that I'm now very lucky to have had, slept. And that really affected my mental health. Sleep deprivation makes everything else in your life crumble, and it's really difficult to cope with. It makes you feel very hopeless. It can make your brain go to all kinds of crazy places. I did Mock the Week yesterday, and Hugh Dennis said, ‘How are you?’ And I said to him, ‘My eldest woke up at 4:25, and my youngest woke up at 5:30, so I don't know who's Prime Minister today.”
Maternal mental health, she says, is a conversation that needs to be had. “I was doing stand-up about stuff I was going through and I had a couple of messages telling me I had postnatal anxiety from strangers. That was hard to hear. But it made sense.”
From political theatre to comedy
Pascoe, who grew up in Essex, developed her funny bone in her late 20s. The Taskmaster star says: “I was on Romesh Ranganathan's show that you do with a parent or a child. And one of the questions he asked my mum was, ‘Was she funny growing up?’ And she's like, ‘No. No, she wasn't.’”
She actually wanted a career in politics. “I thought that I wanted to make political theatre. I failed sideways in to comedy.” But, she says, comedians do have an important platform on the world stage. “The amazing thing about comedy is that people will listen to you for quite a long time if they're having a nice time, and so comedians can be really powerful.”
Though she disagrees with the flippancy which often comes with topical comedy. “Some things we should be agitated about, not laugh, and want to do things about it.”
With Andy Burnham at the helm, she thinks we’ve hit a turning point in British politics. “I think there's potential for great hope. We've been through some real idiots that have done us a great disservice. For a long time I was looking at politics thinking Britain doesn't have the politicians it deserves. We're a country of really hard-working people, we are so culturally important in the world, we're inventors, I'm proud to be British. I think we should be proud to be British, and our politicians did not reflect that.”
“But with Andy Burnham, and others, I think there are some really sensible politicians who want to make people's lives better. People are paying too much for fuel and food. The pressures on people are huge. And that relates to mental health. If you are getting up every day thinking, ‘Am I going to need to put my heating on and I can't?’ or having to do the kids' packed lunches going, 'What have we got left? And that means we've got nothing for dinner’ that will have a huge impact.”
“There's a lot of people whose lives have got worse in the last 10 to 15 years because of political decisions, but I’m hopeful we might now have a generation of very sensible politicians who know that people deserve a better standard of living than this.”
Bupa Mental Health has partnered with comedian and mother of two Sara Pascoe to encourage Brits to ‘read between the reels’ – looking beyond humour and memes as a potential sign that someone may be struggling with stress or anxiety, and encouraging people to seek professional support, now available face-to-face at Bupa Mindplace centres.
