Paul Hollywood on his love of flying and how he landed TV career

Great British Bake Off’s Paul Hollywood has a dream, and it’s not pie in the sky.

The man with a need for speed (he’s a keen biker) has a vision of flying a helicopter to the land of his forebears – Poolewe in the north-west Highlands. “It would be quicker and easier than by road,” he grins.

The Wirral-born baker, who has judged on the show for 15 years, initially with Mary Berry for the BBC before controversially moving to Channel 4 in 2017 to judge with Prue Leith, always knew there was Scots blood in his veins.

But it wasn’t until he took part in the BBC genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are? that he realised how deep it ran. “I’m more Celt than I am English,” the 59-year-old tells P.S. from his home in rural Kent.

Paul, whose great-grandfather Kenneth Mackenzie was in the Glasgow police, says: “They always ask you before they start the genealogy programme: ‘Where do you feel more comfortable?’

“I said in a scenic, remote location with mountains and streams. At the end of the filming, I was sitting on a rock just outside Poolewe, and they told me to look around and then they played back what I’d said at the beginning. ‘Oh my God,’ I said, ‘this is it…’”

He adds with more than a hint of pride: “I am a Mackenzie of Gairloch and Poolewe. My family are Highlanders who went down to Glasgow in the 1800s.”

In this year’s New Year’s Bake Off he sported a kilt made for him by Black Isle designer Siobhan Mackenzie. “I wore it for the Hogmanay Bake Off special and Prue wore her Leith colours.”

Paul has toured in Scotland, worked at the BBC’s Glasgow studios, and spent a week filming in Gairloch and Poolewe, and he is planning a return, initially as a road trip.

He embarked on a helicopter pilot course in 2023. “It was a dream I had as a kid. I used to have all these toy helicopters,” he reveals.

“Then, years ago, I had a trial lesson for a birthday present. There are nine exams. I have done them all and I have my radio licence.

“I still have to do a final practical test. I am trying to fit it in around work and I can’t fly when I’m filming.

“It feels like I have accomplished something for myself. It has been good to sit down and study for what feels like the first time in my life.

“I always struggled in school, I lacked the concentration. I didn’t try, nothing clicked. If they had baking classes, I would have probably done all right. Clearly, I can concentrate when I’m interested in something.”

Paul and Prue wore their tartans for a New Year Bake Off special.

Paul – who in April hit headlines when he went to the aid of a pilot who crashed his small plane into a field in Kent – admits he would never have imagined having a TV career or that it would lead to authorship and even bankroll his dream of flying helicopters.

The Wallasey lad started out following in his graphic designer mum Gillian’s footsteps but gave up art college to join his dad John in his bakery business, before becoming head baker at top hotels in the UK and Cyprus. He has just launched his sixth recipe book, Celebrate, which is in part inspired by a childhood centred around the church at which his grandfather was a lay preacher and his grandmother organised coffee mornings.

Reliving those days, he says: “Most times there was always a birthday or people going back to the church for a party and there were a lot of traybakes and treats, which is where a lot of the ideas for the book came from.”

An eclectic mix of foolproof recipes for showstopping bakes marking life’s special moments, it is packed with easy traybakes, layer cakes, quiches, tarts, breads, pastries, desserts and cookies.

Dad-of-one Paul married his second wife, Melissa, in 2023 in his beloved Cyprus, where he lived for six years and made his first foray into TV.

He says: “(Food writer) Thane Prince was making a programme, Food From the Village, and asked me to be part of it.

“He said I was quite natural on television and I should do some more. He gave me a card and said: ‘Contact this agent when you’re back in the UK,’ so I did.”

It led to a TV series with James Martin in 2000 and, among others, appearances on This Morning and the Gloria Hunniford Show. A few years later he got the call for the Great British Bake Off. Fame came fast.

“In the first couple of years of Bake Off, I could walk down the road without too much of an issue. Now it’s different,” he says.

“You have to adjust and get used to that. What you gain financially is fantastic, but what you lose is quite substantial – your anonymity, your privacy – but you don’t know that at the beginning.”

With millions of viewers and its popularity in the States rocketing, he laughs: “People come up and talk to you in the strangest places. I was using the loo in Switzerland and a Brazilian bloke came in and recognised me straight away. He asked if I would speak to his wife. I said I would, but could I just finish what I was doing.”

Despite his serious Bake Off persona, he has a sense of humour, as his part in the Compare the Meerkat TV ads shows.

“People who know me know I don’t take myself seriously. The role I have in Bake Off is a role. Real life is very different.

“I am constantly taking the mickey out of myself. That advert tickled me so I said I’d do it.

“People were phoning me saying: ‘Why don’t you get off my television,’” he grins.

“Being on the TV wasn’t a job that you looked at when I was a kid. Even my mum said that out of all of my brothers I’d be the last one to do that. I was quite quiet and shy. It just found me.”

Hosts Alison Hammond and Noel Fielding with Paul and new judge Lady Caroline Waldegrave in the new series of The Great Celebrity Bake Off for Stand Up To Cancer. — Hosts Alison Hammond and Noel Fielding with Paul Hollywood and new judge Lady Caroline Waldegrave in the new series of The Great Celebrity Bake Off for Stand Up To Cancer.

Any regrets?

“I have no regrets TV-wise. I feel I have done all the things I’ve set out to do. I’m contented with where I am and with what I am doing but it has taken me a long time to get that point. I live in the middle of nowhere and keep myself to myself.

“I’m doing what I did when I was young.

“I like a quiet life, reading old spy novels and flying stories, cycling, sitting in the sunshine and listening to good music. I’m a big fan of Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. I’m a bit of a hippy really.”

Paul’s five-star work experience

Paul Hollywood worked as head baker at some of Britain’s most exclusive hotels, including Cliveden, the Chester Grosvenor and The Dorchester, as well as the five star Annabelle in Cyprus, before getting his start in UK TV.

In 1999 he co-hosted shows with James Martin for the Carlton Food Network and CFN Taste.

Now heading into his 17th year with The Great British Bake Off, and with an MBE for baking and broadcasting, he remembers his salad days, juggling hotel work with TV.

Recalling his meeting with his now pal John Torode in Cyprus, he says: “He knew a chef I worked with in the hotel. Years later I came back to the UK and did a programme with James Martin, and John was one of the guests. He walked in and went, ‘Oh my God, I saw your name but thought it can’t be that guy from Cyprus. Well done mate’.

“I met Jamie Oliver when he was doing Naked Chef. He used to say, ‘just do it mate, enjoy it’. But I was still working in hotels and TV wasn’t my main job. It was a bit of icing on the side of the cake.”

Now it’s the main deal, who would Paul have bake his showstopper? “Probably Raymond Blanc, he is a legend, a god. His food, and the way he approaches his food, is stunning… or Benoit (Blin),” he says, blue eyes sparkling.

Celebrate: Joyful Baking All Year Round by Paul Hollywood is published by Bloomsbury