Dame Mary Berry, Dame Prue Leith and now Nigella Lawson have brought vim and prestige to The Great British Bake Off, but there was one baking expert who slipped through the net.
Jane Asher, the actress whose baking business led to her nickname of the “queen of cakes”, reveals that she was in the running to host the show alongside Paul Hollywood but turned down the offer.
"I might have had a slight approach at one point, but I was a bit [doubtful] about those kind of things," the actress and professional baker tells hello! in this exclusive interview. "That would have been a long time ago. Now, I would definitely think Nigella couldn't be beat. She's wonderful. Acting is the main part of my life."
Portraying Queen Elizabeth II
Jane, who came to prominence in the swirl of the Sixties with her role in Alfie and her engagement to Sir Paul McCartney, is currently starring as Queen Elizabeth II in By Royal Appointment, Daisy Goodwin's play about the late monarch's relationship with her dressers, one of whom is based loosely on Elizabeth's personal assistant, Angela Kelly.
The idea of portraying the monarch is "extremely daunting", Jane says. "Not just because, of course, she's much loved, but because so many wonderful, well-known actresses have played her. But then, I should be so lucky."
She researched the part but hesitates to say that she has an understanding of Elizabeth’s character. "I feel I know a little bit more about the way she thought, but it's hard not to revert to the image and the idea of her that we all have from childhood.
© Robert Day
© Getty Images"The fascinating thing is that she was an incredibly careful, tactful, brilliant woman who would never reveal anything that she felt was in any way controversial – whereas in the way she dressed, she very often managed to, as she put it, 'speak to her people' without saying a word."
Jane met the Queen several times and found her "very charming, very professional, very relaxed", and noted the way that she would give her attention fully before moving on to the next person in line. "Her job was not easy, and she did it brilliantly," she adds.
Jane had closer encounters with the Princess Royal, working with her as president of the National Autistic Society, of which Anne was patron until 2003, when she was succeeded by the Countess of Wessex, as the Duchess of Edinburgh was then.
"We would often do speeches together at certain dos and she would have done all her homework. [She] spoke so brilliantly, and I did get to know her pretty well."
No more nude scenes?
Since turning 80 this year, Jane has decided against appearing in the nude. "Now I wouldn't do it for anything," the actress says emphatically, before adding that her last nearly-nude scene came only two years ago. It was in the forthcoming short film Happy & Glorious, a fantastical tale about dementia, for which she stood in a garden, seemingly naked.
"I had to look as if I was naked from the back, but I wasn't really at all,” she says. “They had got an intimacy co-ordinator and she was wonderful."
Jane had been sceptical about intimacy co-ordinators, who have become a staple of the film industry over the past ten years as a way of protecting performers from unwanted exposure.
"I completely rethought my attitude to them. If the bit that was hiding my bum had slipped a bit, she'd step in and say: 'No, that's not working, you can't use that.' She made the whole thing much happier than it might have been if I'd been anxious and nervous,” she says.
Looking back at her time with The Beatles
Jane was born in Willesden, north-west London, and found fame as a child actress. She was engaged to Sir Paul McCartney, inspiring him to write hits such as And I Love Her and I Want To Hold Your Hand, but broke it off in 1968 after he was unfaithful.
She laughs at the prospect of seeing herself portrayed by Lucy Boynton in Sam Mendes's forthcoming The Beatles film series, which is scheduled for release in 2028.
Asked if she is anxious about the films, she says: "No, I'd probably rather leave it alone, because nobody knows what you were really like or what things were really like. But I think it's a funny idea that somebody's going to pretend to be me. I don't know what I'm really like. How are they going to know what I'm really like?"
© Mirrorpix via Getty ImagesWhat was it like to be at the centre of the cultural scene in the Sixties?
"When you're in the middle of something, you can't step back and look at it. It's very different, the way you felt then, to looking at it now,” she says. “Looking at it objectively now, it was a time of terrific artistic endeavour, and it did feel, even at the time, much more positive than things feel at the moment."
She reinvented herself as a baker in the Eighties, running a cake shop in Chelsea for 25 years until closing the business in 2015 to return to acting.
She has three children with her husband, the illustrator Gerald Scarfe, and is a stepmother to two children from Gerald's previous relationships. Jane says that being a grandmother is a delight.
"It is the joy you had when you had children, all over again," she says. "You get a lot of wonderful arms around your neck. The magic of it is extraordinary."
© David M. BenettShe turned 80 in April. Was it a daunting prospect? "My goodness – it's one of those things where you think: 'Eighty? Really?' I can't say I'm thrilled to be 80,” she says.
“I think I found 60 easier than I expected, because that sounds as though it might be a big milestone; 70, by that time, we're thinking: 'Yeah, whatever.' But there's something about 80 that gets a bit serious. I do now feel, every day, that I'm lucky to be still around."
Gerald, 90, is travelling with Jane on her theatre tour across Britain, including to venues in Edinburgh and York. They celebrated their 45th wedding anniversary in September. "There's no magic answer [to a long-lasting relationship],” the actress says. “It's give and take and all the cliched things. I'm lucky to have picked the right person."
By Royal Appointment is on tour across the UK until 6 Feb 2027
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