Edd Kimber on the world of chocolate

·46 min·3 clips

Ed Kimber, the first Bake Off winner, admits he didn't know who Mary Berry was.

The chat opens in full Bake Off reunion mode. The host and guest laugh about how Bake Off people do not just gather by series. They gather across the whole big family. Chetna McCann is the magnet here. Her book launches, especially one at her house, come up as the kind of places where people from nearly every season seem to appear. The guest calls it Bake Off Central, and the phrase fits. There is a funny feeling that the group has become large enough to populate its own little world. Then Nigella comes into it. The host asks about the news, and the guest answers with easy enthusiasm: great, obviously. Journalists had already been calling around. He says he was asked about the rumors before the announcement, and the choice only made sense to him. He sounds surprised they got her. His guess is that Nigella must have been on the list even for the original role. The warmth here feels personal rather than polished. He talks about Nigella as someone who pulled a generation into cooking and, just as much in this conversation, baking. Her early work gets its due too. He points out that one of her well known early books was basically a baking book, which people forget. Mary Berry comes up briefly, and the guest admits he did not know who she was when he went on Bake Off. That says a lot. The real thread is food television as a strange, affectionate social world, where gossip, launches, judges, and kitchen influences all end up at the same table.

As heard by us

Edd Kimber turns Bake Off afterlife, book launches, and Nigella nostalgia into easy, affectionate food-world gossip.

Good Food brings Edd Kimber into an easy, bakery-adjacent chat that is less about technique than the small social world around British baking.

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Why you'd press play

A chocolate chat that slips neatly into Bake Off gossip and memory.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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