Mel, Sue & Mary too…

• Mel is the youngest of four children and has Belgian, Polish, Lithuanian and Belarussian ancestry.
• She is very good at parallel parking – give her any-sized space, unless her husband is in the car.
• Her nickname is Miggins, after her family named her Mrs Miggins in Blackadder, who runs a pie shop.
• The first record she and her sister ever bought was Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen.
• The most expensive thing she ever splashed out on was a Harris Tweed handbag from Glasgow Airport for £96 when she was slightly worse for wear.
• Her favourite place in Britain is Ullswater in the Lake District.
• Mel appeared in three series of the twice Bafta-nominated cult sketch show Sorry I’ve Got No Head, as well as the West End musical Eurobeat: Almost Eurovision!
• She has also appeared in one episode of The Vicar Of Dibley and co-starred in the 2005 BBC 1 sitcom Blessed.
• She loves Jon Snow, the Channel 4 newsreader.
• She was the sixth student to be voted out of Comic Relief Does Fame Academy.

• Sue is a typical freelancer and only takes minibreaks, so she doesn’t miss out on any work.
• The one thing she hates about holidays is the unpacking.
• Sue told her parents she was gay when she was 28, although her sexuality was only revealed to the public in 2002 by her ex-girlfriend Rhona Cameron during an appearance on I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!
• After turning 40 she had therapy when she broke up with her long-term partner Kate Williams and thoroughly recommends it.
• Sue doesn’t do dresses: she wears jeans, blazers and suits, both on and off screen. ‘I’m not the sort to show off flesh,’ she said.
• Sue is an accomplished pianist and achieved Grade 8 piano and she has a degree in English Literature.
• In 2008 she came first on the BBC show Maestro, which culminated in her conducting at the Last Night Of The Proms in Hyde Park.
• She now has a passion for conducting and has led the Dinnington Colliery Band, playing the National Anthem to open the Four Nations rugby as part of the documentary, A Band For Britain.
• Sue wrote, starred in and composed the music for her latest sitcom Heading Out.

• Mary’s father was the Mayor of Bath and founder of the Bath Assembly – now the Bath International Music Festival.
• Her parents kept goats to supplement their Second World War milk ration.
• Mary hated lessons at school but loved domestic science. The headmistress told her parents, ‘I don’t know what she’s going to do. I suppose she could do something with cooking or look after children.’
• The first thing she ever cooked was a treacle sponge, produced during a domestic science lesson with the aptly named teacher, Miss Date.
• Mary contracted polio when she was 13 and lost the use of her muscles in her left hand. ‘My left hand is crumpled, but it doesn’t make any difference. It just means I don’t have to darn socks,’ she said.
• Mary has written more than 70 books, which have sold in excess of six million copies worldwide.
• Tragically, her third child William died when he was 19, in a car accident. ‘He went out in the car with his sister Annabel to get a newspaper and simply drove too fast.’
• In her spare time Mary collects vintage kitchenalia. One of her favourite items is a 19th-century tin opener.
• Mary has played tennis for the past 20 years. ‘At my age you have to keep fit. I hate people to see me huge and say, “Oh, that’s because she eats so much cake.”’
• According to Mel and Sue, Mary once went clubbing in Ibiza until the early hours. She is also quite fond of tequila.
• She only eats toast and Marmite for breakfast.
• Mary loves what she does so much that during a family holiday in Devon she worked in a bakery in Salcombe, ‘because they were quite ahead of their time’.
• She doesn’t like Paul Hollywood’s dress sense: ‘He’s going with the trend, but it looks like he can’t afford [trousers] without any holes in them.’
• Mary caused some controversy when her Complete Cookbook contained a recipe that featured shark fillets.
• She admires Nigella Lawson and once said, ‘No wonder people follow her – she’s a powerhouse.’
• However, she doesn’t give Gordon Ramsay’s style the thumbs up, because he makes television that is ‘violent, cruel and noisy’.
• Her tip for dinner party guests: ‘You don’t need to take flowers or a bottle of wine when you go to a friend’s, you can take your own bake.’
• Mary has revealed, ‘Prince William said Kate used my recipes.’

The baking highs…

• Viewing figures have soared from a modest two million for the first episode to a peak of more than 6.4 million viewers for the third series.
• 5.6 million watched the first episode of the latest series.
• Mary Berry became a trendsetter in 2012 when her floral silk bomber jacket from Zara, priced £29.99, sold out after she wore it on the show.The show won a Bafta in the Features category in 2012 and 2013.
• Series winners Joanne Wheatley, Edd Kimber and John Whaite have become celebrity bakers.
• The Women’s Institute membership has reached its highest level since 1970 – the show has inspired 50,000 women to join.

…And the lows

• In the latest series Rob Smart’s Showstopper Dalek tower was a disaster. It collapsed, despite plenty of edible glue, cocktail sticks and Mel’s best efforts to hold it together.
• Paul Hollywood has become an unlikely sex symbol. He nearly quit the show after the first series, saying that he might have been happier if he had never been famous.
• In the latest series, Mel tried to measure a contestant’s Showstopper shortbread tower of 70 biscuits with a ruler, causing it to tumble in the last few minutes of the challenge.
• John Whaite had to withdraw from one episode in the second series after he accidentally sliced his finger open on an electric mixer during the Showstopper challenge.