London - Her firm-but-fair approach on The Great British Bake Off has proved to be a refreshing, old-fashioned treat for millions of viewers.
And, according to Mary Berry, it is high time other TV cooks started remembering their manners.
The 78-year-old cookery writer and presenter condemns many shows on TV as “violent, cruel and noisy” and said she hates celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay’s notoriously foul-mouthed programmes.
She only started to like Jamie Oliver when he stopped being “irritating and over the top” and says reality programmes such as Strictly Come Dancing are “ghastly”.
Berry has also revealed how she nearly ditched the name that has made her famous because she wanted to take her husband’s name – but her agent said it was a stupid idea.
Explaining the success of her BBC2 show in an interview with Radio Times, she said: “The Great British Bake Off is family entertainment. There aren’t many programmes where all ages can sit and watch from beginning to end.
“Everything else is violent, cruel and noisy. We’re educational without viewers realising it.”
She reserved her most scathing criticisms for Gordon Ramsay, who in 2009 came under fire after he swore 243 times in one episode of his Channel 4 show Gordon’s Great British Nightmare – or once every 20 seconds – and had another show called Gordon Ramsay’s F Word because of his excessive use of four-letter expletives.
“I hate Gordon Ramsay’s programmes: I don’t know if he’s been told it makes good television,” Berry said.
“James [sic] Oliver is a joy. I saw him yesterday and he agreed that when he was 23 he was irritating, bumptious and over the top, but he’s made cooking fun.”
She added: “I won’t do Strictly or any of those ghastly reality programmes. I’m A Celebrity would be the end. It makes me shudder.”
Berry has written 70 cookery books, most of them before her recent rise to TV celebrity. The first – The Hamlyn All Colour Cookbook – was published in 1966, the same year she married her husband, Paul Hunnings, now 81.
She revealed she initially planned to take his surname, despite having already built up a public profile by publishing recipes and articles in magazines and newspapers.
“I told my boss I’d like to be Mary Hunnings and she said, ‘Don’t be so stupid. You’ve only just started and the public is used to Mary Berry.’
“I thought, ‘Is that fair to my husband?’ – stupid, pathetic person that I was.
“It was quite advanced in those days, but he didn’t mind. He jokes he used to walk one step behind me before Bake Off, now it’s two.”
She and her husband have two surviving children, Annabel Bosher, 41, and Tom Berry, 45. Another son, William, was killed in a car accident in 1989 aged 19.
Berry praised her husband, a retired bookseller, for helping her cope with her busy working life: “I’ve been so lucky to have a wonderful husband – always there when I get home I ring before I arrive and he’s laid the table and he has a glass of wine ready.
“My father did the same when I’d return from London. [He] walked out of the house with a gin and tonic.”
Asked about the break-up of Bake Off co-judge Paul Hollywood’s marriage, Berry responded: “I wouldn’t dream of commenting on his life. I’m immensely fond of him. He’s my other half on television, but his life is his life.
“I respect Paul but get infuriated sometimes because he worries what will sell, whereas I’m fussy about taste. He’s commercial.” - Daily Mail