Former 'Bake Off' winner Sophie Faldo dismisses she is 'heading back to Afghanistan' claims

Sophie Faldo, the winner of the 2017 series of The Great British Bake Off, has denied she is ‘heading back to Army duty’, as in reality she never left.

She had told the The Sun that she was keen to get back into combat. Faldo had served with the Royal Artillery as a captain in Helmand Province in 2009 and 2010.

“It is similar to the job that I have done in the past and it involves dealing with different kinds of artillery. Now I want to go out on tour again and the job that I want to go into is quite frontline and back in Afghanistan, so I hope that I will get it,” she told the paper.

However, the GBBO winner has since told Huffington Post UK that her comments were misrepresented, and are actually about her being an Army Reservist.

“I left the regular army in 2012 and I’ve been a reservist ever since then,” she said. “So everyone’s saying I’m going back and I’m like, ‘Well I’m not going back, I never left it’.

“I was discussing a reservist role because I’ve moved from a cavalry regiment into an artillery regiment – I’ve just moved within the Army. I’m now going back to a similar job that I was doing when I left the regulars.

“It’s really frustrating because right from the beginning, I was always quoted as being a former Army officer but actually I never left,” she told the digital news source.

Faldo recently scrapped plans for a cookbook following her Bake Off win, after reportedly splitting with her management company.

Prior to entering the TV baking contest, she worked as a personal trainer after leaving the army, and was also training to be a stuntwoman.

Faldo beat Kate Lyon and Steven Carter-Bailey to the winner’s trophy in the eighth series of Bake Off, the first to be broadcast on Channel 4 following its move from the BBC.

Famously, judge Prue Leith accidentally tweeted that she was the winner of the show, 12 hours before the final aired.

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