Bake Off's Paul Hollywood: 'I love fast food!'
Great British Bake Off judge Paul Hollywood has confessed he has an appetite for fast food. Bread expert Paul and baking queen Mary Berry will crown the winner of the third series of the BBC2 show, which has become a surprise hit, on Tuesday night. Paul told the Radio Times that he developed a hankering for salt after filming an episode of The Great British Bake Off and sampling the contestants' sugary creations. He said: "I crave salt. We recently filmed our Christmas special and on the way back to our hotel I pulled into a drive-in McDonald's with Bezza - that's my pet name for Mary Berry. "I'd been eating cakes all day and had a big craving. 'Big Mac, large fries... what do you want Bezza?' She wasn't impressed!" Brendan Lynch, James Morton and John Whaite are competing to be crowned Best Amateur Baker in a last challenge which will see them create pithiviers, fondant fancies and chiffon sponges. Paul said that he could not watch other baking shows. Asked about the last TV programme he switched off, he said: "The Hairy Bikers' Bakeation. I find it very difficult to watch other baking programmes because I disagree with everything. "I'm such a stickler it has to be my way or the highway. When I see things done differently, I get really wound up." Paul also said he would give "serious thought" to competing on Strictly Come Dancing if asked, but that he did not like to watch himself on TV.
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Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix.
An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.