Yahoo News GBBO's Prue Leith says she "felt suicidal"
Prue Leith hasn't quite lived down spoiling the result of The Great British Bake Off's grand finale.
In case you've been living in a Bunt-shaped hole, the new judge learned the perils of tweeting first-hand when she accidentally congratulated winner Sophie Faldo as the winner of the show's first ever series on Channel 4 12 hours before her victory aired on telly.
Anyway, addressing the "awful" mistake in detail for the first time today (November 22) on This Morning, poor Prue confessed that she "felt suicidal" after accidentally revealing this year's winner on Twitter.
Speaking to Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield about her Bake Off mishap, she said: "You are going to ask me about that tweet!
"I think that was one of the worst half an hours [of my life]. That first half an hour, when I realised what I'd done, which was the most idiotic thing in the world… I tweeted the name of the winner of Bake Off by mistake. I was in Bhutan. I had not had any reception for a while."
Prue explained that when she switched her phone back on, she had a message saying: "Don't forget to tweet the winner after 10.30." She looked at the time and thought she should do it straight away, forgetting about the time difference.
The food critic added: "I quickly tweeted, as soon as it went I thought, 'Oh my God!' I went into a panic mode. I couldn't work for my phone and I couldn't think how to delete it quickly. I rang my trusted PA and she'd already deleted it. It was 89 seconds after I'd done it but it was already too late.
"I felt suicidal, awful. The thing that upset me the most was that this would take attention off the winner.
"And Sophie [Faldo] has worked for months and months for this moment. The column inches would be about my tweet and not her triumph. I emailed her and she said, 'Don't be silly'.
"Actually everybody was really nice about it. Celebrities would tweet me and say, 'It's exactly what I could have done'. But you have to be a real idiot to do that. We had kept it secret for eight years until I come along and screw up!"
Talking about her job on the Channel 4 show, she said she adored working with Paul Hollywood, Sandi Toksvig and Noel Fielding.
"It is the most enormous fun. What's not to like? I don't have to learn a script or write the links. I just have to eat cake!
"Partly it's because the production company are lovely and the bakers are amazing. They are great bakers. It's lovely."
Luckily for Prue, Channel 4 has confirmed that the gaffe won't prevent her from returning to Bake Off for its next series alongside Noel Fielding, Sandi Toksvig and Paul Hollywood.
The Great British Bake Off will soon be back on Channel 4 for a celebrity special in aid of Stand Up to Cancer.
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