Great British Bake Off’s Prue Leith felt ‘suicidal’ after Twitter gaffe

Great British Bake Off’s Prue Leith felt “suicidal” after spoiling the show’s finale.

The Great British Bake Off concluded its first series on Channel 4 earlier this month.

The final episode of the Great British Bake Off pulled in its biggest audience of the series with a massive 7.7 million viewers and a 34.6% share of audience from 8-9.15pm, making it Channel 4’s biggest overnight performance in five years (since The Paralympic Games Opening Ceremony in 2012).

However the final was somewhat overshadowed by Prue revealing the result twelve hours early on Twitter.

Speaking about the mistake this week, Prue said: “I think that was the worst half an hour, when I realised what I’d done.

“I was in Bhutan and when I got reception in the hotel, there was this mass of tweets and one said ‘Don’t forget to congratulate the winner’ so I tweeted straight away.”

She explained to ITV’s This Morning: “As soon as it went out, I went into panic mode and I couldn’t work my phone, I couldn’t figure out how to delete it.

“In the end I rang my PA – she’d already deleted it 89 seconds after I posted it but it was too late.

Asked how she felt at the time, Prue candidly confessed to hosts Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield: “Suicidal, I mean awful, the thing that upset me most was that it would take attention off the winner.”

Prue went on: “Sophie has worked so hard for months and months and the column inches would be filled with my mistake than her hard work.

“Everybody was really nice about it, a lot of very famous people even tweeted or emailed me to say it’s exactly what I could have done.

“But you have to be a real idiot to do that. Bake Off had kept the winner a secret for 8 years until I come along and screw it up,” she joked.

Despite the social media faux-pas, Channel 4 have said Prue will return next year alongside Paul plus hosts Noel Fielding and Sandi Toksvig.

You can apply for the Great British Bake Off in 2018 on Channel 4 here.