Mary Berry: A Life Through Food
The Food Programme
BBC
4.4 • 976 Ratings
🗓️ 2 February 2020
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sheila Dillon speaks to a veteran of the British food scene; a writer and television presenter who has made cooking – in particular baking – accessible, and achievable, for millions: Mary Berry.
In a candid conversation over exemplary lemon drizzle cake, Mary talks us through her life through food: from the challenges of forging a culinary career as a woman and a mother in the 1960s, to learning how to handle celebrity in her seventies.
With the new series of Best Home Cook, Mary is continuing her quest to educate people of all ages about the joys of cooking. But, as Sheila discovers, this ambitious cook is also a huge advocate for women in the industry - as Mary shares tales of her own struggles to carve out a niche in the culinary world, challenging female stereotypes and sexual harassment in the kitchen…
Over the course of the programme, Sheila gets some insight into ‘the real Mary’ from her long-term collaborator and cookbook co-author Lucy Young - as the renowned TV judge discusses careers highlights to date, including Bake Off, becoming a style icon and meeting Royalty; as well as opening up about trials she has faced in her lifetime, including the tragic death of one of her children.
Transcript
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| 0:50.8 | I'm just showing Mary her own cookbook Mary's Ultimate Cake Book which came out of a |
| 0:58.1 | television series which I took from my mother's house after she died and it's full of all her little notes and bits of paper. |
| 1:06.6 | She made a lot of cakes. |
| 1:07.6 | Do you know it's absolutely lovely to see a book that's been well loved. I mean it I put sticker bits in you |
| 1:15.3 | near those sticky things and write very good did it in mom's old tin or whatever and |
| 1:21.8 | she's got all obviously little notes. |
| 1:24.0 | Yeah. |
| 1:25.0 | Yeah. When the call came in about the bank off, Mary said I will do it if I can be myself. |
| 1:37.9 | And I think that's the absolute key. |
| 1:39.7 | She's absolutely genuine. |
| 1:41.9 | I think Mary's calmness and level-headedness is very much a constant |
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