Great British Bake Off hosts Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc quit: The comedy duo we rarely see apart

Paul Hollywood, Sue Perkins, Mel Giedroyc and Mary Berry judge and host The Great British Bake Off (PA)

We rarely see one without the other and, in that fashion, they chose to depart Great British Bake Off together.

Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc announced their decision to leave the popular baking show after learning it is to move from the BBC to Channel 4.

“We were very shocked and saddened to learn yesterday evening that Bake Off will be moving from its home," they said in a joint statement.

“We made no secret of our desire for the show to remain where it was."

As presenters alongside Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry, innuendo was never far away from their observations inside the Bake Off tent.

In their parting message, they also managed to slip one in by describing having loved seeing the series “rise like a pair of yeasted Latvian baps”.

First impressions

The pair met at Cambridge University when they were both cast in a comedy troupe production. It was there they began writing comedy together.

Perkins said Giedroyc made quite the first impression: “Mel likes to think of herself as a Svengali figure. She witnessed my abortive birth into comedy, and hung around like an impresario, trying to be a big fish in the tiny Cambridge pond in 1988. There is a vague memory of someone in Day-Glo clothes, bleach-blonde hair and fake tan, which in retrospect must have been Mel. I don't know anyone else who would go around looking like that.”

Career

The comedy duo was recruited as writers for French & Saunders before launching the Channel 4 chat show Light Lunch, which became Late Lunch when it was moved to a more lucrative evening slot.

In 2003 they joined Channel 4’s breakfast show RI:SE as presenters and in 2010 were announced as presenters on the first series of Bake Off.

Friendship

In 1999, Giedroyc described how their close-knit friendship meant they spent most of their time together. The pair has now been friends for more than 27 years.

“Over the last 10 years, we've probably averaged 12 hours a day in each other's company," she said. "We're very good mates as well as working together. We live about a 20-minute bus ride apart. It's probably just as well we don't live together, because we would never get anything done. It would all disintegrate into total chaos. It takes a lot to boot us up the arse.”

Bake Off

GBBO marked the first time they had worked together as Giedroyc had taken a break to have children. She told the Daily Mail the series was something she first took on to lift her family out of a difficult financial situation but soon became a role that felt natural to them.

“On the first series I was worried because we hadn’t worked together for a while and we were older," she explained.

“By the second series we thought, 'Oh hang on. Our role’s a bit more like this. We’re the cheeky bookends and Paul and Mary are the meat of the show.' Now I really look forward to every weekend we do Bake Off, but in the beginning all I thought was, 'Mortgage, mortgage, mortgage.'"