Prue Leith Loves Feeding ‘Great British Baking Show’ Leftovers to Friendly Pigs

When The Great British Baking Show is over, necklace-rocking judge/style icon Prue Leith has been known to feed the leftover goodies from the competition to a group of local pigs. Leith’s co-star Noel Fielding mentioned this A+ bit of gossip last week while appearing on a U.K. game show called The Big Fat Quiz Of The Year.

In a clip from the show, host Jimmy Carr welcomes Baking Show Season 6 favorite Kim-Joy Hewlett on stage to pass out some fancy meringues to the celebrity panel, a group that includes American comedian Michelle Wolf and U.K. star Richard Ayoade. Carr asks Hewlett what happens on the show after “you’ve finished with the cakes and the judges have had a little beer.” To which she replies, “The crew will eat it, because they know the ones which are the best ones.” Fielding then chimes in with his behind-the-scenes insight. “Prue, occasionally, if there’s any cakes leftover, she takes them home for her pigs,” he says. After cracking a joke about how he and co-host Sandi Toksvig are actually the animals, Fielding also remarks, “She genuinely has pigs.”

As it turns out, Noel may be fudging the facts a bit here: Back in 2017, Leith actually told the Telegraph U.K. about her proclivity for letting pigs eat the Baking Show leftovers, but they weren’t actually her farm animals. “My neighbour keeps pigs, so these pigs got the most amazing cakes and bread,” Leith remarked. “And I would spend hours taking out all the sticks. Sometimes, the showstoppers, they stick them together with cocktails sticks.”

Although that’s certainly a sweet gesture, sadly, a veterinarian warned that the pigs shouldn’t be eating the sweets at all, so she stopped. “They were already huge pigs,” Prue explained. “So now there’s no more cake. But one of the cameramen has pigs and his vet hasn’t said no.”
• ‘Great British Baking Show’ Leftovers Are Fed to Pigs, According to Noel Fielding [F & W]
• Great British Baking’s Noel Fielding says Prue Leith feeds leftover bakes to her pigs [The Takeout]
• Prue Leith: I fed Bake Off leftovers to the neighbour’s pigs [Telegraph]