Mel Giedroyc has revealed that she once threatened to quit The Great British Bake Off after just one day of filming the very first series. The presenter, who hosted the hit baking show alongside Sue Perkins, admitted she was shocked by the atmosphere behind the scenes when filming began and was not happy with how the producers were treating contestants.
Emergency meeting after day one
Mel recalled: "I’ve only done it once, I phoned my agent, and I said, 'I want out of this,'. "This was after day one." The 58-year-old explained that she called an emergency meeting to express her concerns for the contestants' welfare after they were brought to tears following a long day and filmed crying.
Speaking to Elizabeth Day on her How to Fail podcast, Mel continued: "I called a meeting in the bed and breakfast of where we were, this was the morning of day two of episode one. Because it had been like an 18-hour shoot, and everyone was in tears. And I just thought, 'I’ve never worked like this before'."
Summit meeting at the BBC
The experience prompted what Mel described as a "summit meeting" at the BBC between the first and second episodes, where she spoke up about the kind of programme she wanted Bake Off to be. "I just said, ‘This is not the kind of show that we want to make. I’m really sorry, we won’t get the best out of people. And I don't like this vibe where everyone's crying and suddenly they are on camera'."
Mel said she did not want contestants being pushed to exhaustion simply to create emotional television. She added: "People do cry on Bake Off, but they cry because it’s kind of emotional and they’ve put stuff into it. We don’t want to make them cry because they’re so exhausted and they feel, you know, put upon."
Impact on the show's tone
Mel believes the intervention helped shape the warm and reassuring tone which became one of the show's trademarks, saying after that "things changed" and she believes if it didn't the show "would have been really grim".
And despite Bake Off continuing to thrive long after her departure, Mel revealed she has never actually sat down and watched a full episode of the show. "I feel bad. Hands on heart, I never watched the show when we did it, I've never watched. I've seen bits of course I have, I'd be lying if I said I haven't seen bits but I’ve never sat down and watched, like, a whole series or a whole episode."
