Shocker! Mary Berry Lied a Little Bit on Your Favorite TV Show.
If there’s ever a contemporary remake of A Few Good Men, it might be worth recasting Colonel Nathan Jessup. It’s not that Jack Nicholson won’t be up to reprise one of his most iconic roles, it’s just that there’s someone else who could say “YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!” — and it’s Mary Berry.
Berry, everyone’s fave former Great British Bake Off judge, has admitted that she fudged the truth a bit when she evaluated some of the contestants on the BBC show. Why? Because, like Nicholson’s explosive Base Commander, Berry thought that they (say it with us) couldn’t handle it.
“We did have a wonderful man and he made a beetroot cake,” the 83-year-old Berry told The Express. “It really was awful but we didn’t say it was nasty because he would get so upset.”
The cake, which The Express said was made by a vegan nicknamed “Hipster Stu,” made her feel just as queasy as you’d imagine. “People know when they’ve done something awful,” she said. “It’s been so bad it made me feel quite ill.”
Hipster Stu was Stuart Henshall, a musician who appeared on the show in August 2015 — and he was immediately called “the most hipster contestant The Great British Bake Off has ever seen.” At the time, The Independent said that Berry’s “disdain” at the beetroot he used in his Black Forest gateaux was one of the highlights of the episode, even though it sounds like she was chewing through her own tongue in an attempt to be polite.
He also made a walnut cake in that same episode, which was also a disappointment “because he only managed to use a sole caramelized nut for decoration.” (Fast forward to right now, and Henshall is currently offering his services as a consultant to a London club that will be a plant-based “nutritionally focused brasserie and a holistic wellness clinic.” Cool.)
Berry’s most recent BBC show was Britain’s Best Home Cook, which debuted in the spring. Whatever she’s working on next, we hope she embraces the honest side — whether the contestants can handle the truth or not.