Former Bake Off star Mel Giedroyc talks to Jane McGowan about why she is happy to be swapping soggy bottoms for Shakespeare
My interview with presenter and actress Mel Giedroyc does not get off to the best of starts. After trying to pin her down for months, I am finally told by a publicist just hours before deadline that I can have 15 minutes with her on the phone at 9.30am sharp the following day. But alas, the traffic has other ideas and, after nearly two hours on the road, I am forced to abandon all hope of actually getting to my office, and at 9.28am I pull over into the car park of Homebase in Ewell.
With seconds to spare, I dial and while I wait for an answer, frantically shuffle around trying to balance two phones and a notebook around the steering wheel and gear stick. I am just about in position when I hear the bright and breezy tones so familiar from the hallowed halls of The Great British Bake Off tent.
“Good morning luvvie. What’s all that rustling?” she asks. “Is it the line?”
I am forced to confess that it’s my anorak, to which she says with a little concern, “That sounds a little bit like you’re a stalker?”
After reassuring her I’m not and that this is a scheduled interview, I recount my tale of morning woe and admit that I am in my car. She laughs sympathetically and says, “Oh you poor thing. But I must say that’s a bit of a relief. Shall we crack on?”
Indeed we should, as this year is proving to be one of the biggest of the 49-year-old’s career as she makes a more definite shift from presenter to actress.
Not only is Mel making her Shakespearean debut at the Rose Theatre, Kingston this month as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, in September she takes to the West End stage for a revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Company alongside musical theatre heavyweights Patti Lupone and Rosalie Craig.
“Yes, I am definitely becoming more and more of an actress,” she laughs. “And I know that because I have found myself wearing very large scarves and lots of layering which, as everyone knows, is how all actresses dress.”
For her role of the feisty, fiery yet always witty Beatrice, Mel is once again teaming up with director Simon Dormandy, with whom she worked on the acclaimed Luce in 2016 at the Southwark Playhouse.
“He said he really wanted to stage Much Ado at the Rose, and asked me if I would be up for playing Beatrice and it was just like – ‘What? Er yeah, of course!’ It was a bit of a plunge moment but sometimes you just have to take that plunge.”
It is indeed a ‘plunge’ for the performer who, despite a raft of dramatic performances is still best known for her work alongside Sue Perkins on The Great British Bake Off. As Much Ado is one of the flagship productions of the Rose’s 10th-anniversary celebratory year, box office sales are undoubtedly banking on an audience curious to learn whether a woman whose most famous lines to date are, ‘Get set, bake’ can deliver on some of Shakespeare’s greatest comic verse.
“Yes, it was a big decision,” admits the mother-of-two. “For one I’m untrained, and another I don’t really do Shakespeare. This is the role of all roles and it’s got to be good. It’s got to be funny, yes it’s got to be funny,” she reiterates more as an instruction to herself. “I am slightly bricking it, but my dad always used to say that if there is not an element of brown trouser in something, is it actually worth taking on?
“Obviously it’s not true for every line of work. I mean if a brain surgeon came in to see you before an operation with brown trousers, then well, you know, that might not be such a good thing. But as a ham, if you want to keep things interesting then a little bit of fear is probably essential. And if people tear you down, then so be it, but you’ve got to give it a go – haven’t you?”
Born in Epsom in 1968, the youngest of four, Mel spent her early years in Leatherhead before the family moved to Oxford when she was 11. Her unusual surname – pronounced Ged-roych comes from her late father, a Polish aristocrat forced to flee his country during the Second World War. He was fiercely proud of his name and of his four talented children – Mel’s older brother Miko is a musician while sister Kasia is a writer and Coky, a television director.
“Our house was always very noisy and very, very busy,” she recalls. “But we weren’t the kind of family who would just pop up to the National to see the latest Brecht or something. My mum (a children’s book illustrator) had enough to do bringing up four kids. But what we did do was go to our local theatre in Leatherhead – The Thorndike – as it was then. I remember seeing Charley’s Aunt and Rookery Nook which have certainly stayed with me. But what we never missed was the pantomime. Every year I was one of those children, elbows out, fighting my way on to the stage like some jumble sale harridan. I was like a rat out of a trap to get to the front to sing the song with the dame.”
As I reveal that theatre ‘god’ Sir Trevor Nunn told me exactly the same thing, she bellows: “Well if it’s good enough for the Nunn, then it’s good enough for me.”
In 1988 Mel headed to Cambridge University to study Italian and while there met a certain Ms Sue Perkins. The pair quickly struck up a friendship and although they would later go on to be one of the most successful presenting double acts on British TV, they initially started out as performers.
“Gosh, I can’t believe it’s 26 years ago, that’s just ludicrous,” she says. “We began writing and performing sketch comedy and creating characters and we’d take the shows on tour and to Edinburgh, and that happened for years until we landed television jobs. So to be honest, I think acting has always been brewing alongside the presenting.”
The pair first caught the nation’s attention fronting the slightly anarchic Light Lunch – a daily Channel 4 show which saw Mel and Sue meeting guests and hosting bands while making lunch. This established the duo and they went on to present Late Lunch and then had their own chat show on ITV.
But initial success was short lived and, after Mel took time out to start a family, the pair suddenly found themselves out of favour and of work. Mel and her husband, director Ben Morris were even forced to sell their house, living for a while in a two-bedroom flat. She has spoken of the events in the past, describing it as “a tricky time” leading to sleepless nights and near bankruptcy.
And while Sue landed jobs with Giles Coren on BBC2’s popular Supersizers food show, Mel kept her hand in with roles on children’s TV in teenage sitcom Sadie J and the CBBC sketch show Sorry, I’ve Got No Head which also featured well-known comedians Marcus Brigstocke and Javone Prince.
“I loved that show,” she exclaims. “It was so well written and such good fun – no budget of course, but great to work on.”
Then along came The Great British Bake Off – the show that put the phrase ‘soggy bottom’ into the nation’s vocabulary and spurred the whole country to become a bunting-buying, Victoria-sandwich-stirring army. Running for seven years on BBC2 and latterly BBC1, more than 13.85m people watched a dewy-eyed Mary Berry present Candice Brown with the trophy in 2016.
Viewers fell in love with Mel and Sue’s relentless innuendos often involving cream-filled horns and firm buns, but when the show moved to Channel 4 after a row over cash, Mel and Sue (along with Berry) opted out, famously and wittily stating, they had no intentions of “going with the dough”.
Today, Mel refers to it as a “halcyon time” but one gets the feeling, that the Bake Off question is one she has been asked far too often.
“Oh it was amazing and I love working with Sue. I always will,” she says with genuine feeling. “Every time it’s a real treat and that will never change. But the acting is something that I really love doing and if I’m honest, in my latter years if I’ve still got my marbles and some kind of balance, I’d love to just keep doing lots of different parts.”
But for her forthcoming role, Mel is aware that the pressure for her to perform is well and truly on.
“It’s always hard coming from a comedy background,” she admits. “You find yourself in a room with all these people and it’s like, ‘S***, I didn’t go to RADA, I didn’t go to LAMDA.’ But when you are working with great casts you can just stand there and watch these actors and, at the risk of sounding like a gushing old git, I am basically going to use my bat ears and learn from this fantastic cast as much as I can.
“For me it’s all about the gang. We’re all in this together and I just love being part of a team. Together we’re going to give the audience a rollicking evening of entertainment. And every night there’s fresh meat – it’s a different show every night because it’s a different audience, unless you get someone creepy sitting in the same seat for two weeks. Although I’m not suggesting we’re going to get someone like that at the Rose – it’s just not that kind of place is it?”
And while I agree the Rose is not that kind of place, I sort of get the feeling she may be issuing some kind of warning to me and my anorak.
Much Ado About Nothing is at the Rose Theatre, Kingston from Apr 13-May 6. For further information and tickets go to rosetheatrekingston.org
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