The Times Magazine 33“Oh, I was called every name under the
sun,” he says. “It was so horrendous, I actually
cried. No one wants to be painted as the
pantomime villain, especially when I was just
sticking with a job I loved. But you can’t kick
against it. David Walliams actually took me
aside and said, ‘Mate, it’s just a game. Enjoy it.’
You’re clickbait, basically. But it hurt me. After
a while, though, I got tough. I just thought,
‘OK, I’ll be your bad guy.’ ”
That’s what it’s like becoming famous in
Britain, he says. You enjoy a brief honeymoon
period but then the mood turns. People on the
show have sold stories about him because they
have something of their own to promote, he
adds. And then, of course, there has been his
chaotic love life. Everyone wants to know
whom he is dating. The intensity of tabloid
interest has made his world very small.
“I don’t trust people any more. I’m really
wary of who gets close and I never used to be
like that. In fact, I’m a hermit, whereas I used
to be the life and soul of the party. I was
always first down the bowling alley. But now
quite often someone suggests going out and
I’ll say, ‘Yeah, I’ll be there,’ and I don’t go.”
His hobbies – motorbikes, scuba diving
and, most recently, cycling – are all things
with built-in anonymity.
“I wear a black visor on the bike so no one
knows it’s me. And when me and the lads stop
for a coffee, I’ll hang around at the back. As
for scuba diving – you’re underwater, so the
fish aren’t bothered, are they? Like I say, I’m
a hermit. I like to be in my dressing gown
by 7pm and watching a box set.”
He’s got Melissa, his Lego and the tight-
knit group he hangs out with. Nick Mason,
of course, and the TV presenter and biker
Charley Boorman, not to mention multiple
superbike champion Shane “Shakey” Byrne
with whom he does a podcast. It’s quite good.
They discuss fame, feelings, prostate cancer
and why there aren’t more women racing
motorbikes, among other things.
“It’s grounding. We’re just talking about
how bikes work. Of course I get the odd
moment with Nick [Mason] when I think,
‘You played on Comfortably Numb!’ Which
I think is the greatest song ever,” he says.
I put a Sliding Doors moment to him, a
scenario where his life turns out differently.Hollywood with his ex-wife, Alex, in 2015With his former girlfriend Summer Monteys-Fullam, 2018With his current partner, Melissa Spalding, 2021bought together. Within months he’d started
dating Spalding, an old friend. Then lockdown
came and they decided she should move in.
No wonder he’s been doing a lot of Lego.
Relationships are hard. Break-ups are gruelling.
Yet he just seems to go from one to another.
“This is all very personal,” he says.
I have a theory: Paul Hollywood thinks
he’s a bit of a rock star. I mean, when he did
his British Baking Live tour he strutted on to
AC/DC’s iconic nodder Back in Black (he then
prepared baked brie and Parma ham with
cranberry sauce). At other shows he’s come on
to Lenny Kravitz’s raunchy Strut. And he has
blown a fair bit of his newfound fortune on
racing cars and motorbikes. He hangs out with
Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason (who also
likes racing cars and owns a Ferrari 250 GTO
valued at £40 million). Maybe for a good-
looking and suddenly wealthy man, making
iced buns just isn’t sexy enough.
Did he think he was a rock star?
“God, no. I used that Kravitz song because
it’s great music. I grew up as a ‘sweat’ [scouse
slang for a rocker], wearing flares, a velvet
jacket and smelling of petunia. That’s the
music I love. And with the cars – it’s as much
a love of beautiful engineering and seeing how
things work as anything else. I am not a rock
god by any stretch of anyone’s imagination.
That’s just not me.”
In GBBO, first Mary Berry and now Prue
Leith play the venerable baking matriarch. As
the contestant’s carrot cake collapses or their
iced buns wilt, they always offer smiles of
encouragement. So what’s Hollywood’s role?
It’s almost Freudian. He plays the stern father,
withholding affection (the handshake) until
that cream horn is exactly right.
“The show would be too sickly if I wasn’t,”
he says. “My job is to be tough – I am
supposed to be no-nonsense.”
However, it’s partly an act. Hollywood is
actually quite sensitive. Sometimes, when an
anxious contestant loses it and starts crying,
he’s the one who reassures them.
“They’ll be sobbing and I’ll say, ‘Honestly,
it’s only a TV show about cakes.’ I hate people
being upset. But they always cut that bit out
because it’s not what they want from me.”
I think Hollywood is quite emotional in
real life too. In 2017 when Love Productions,
the makers of GBBO, sold the show to
Channel 4, Mary Berry, Mel and Sue all
declined to be involved (they were replaced by
Prue Leith, Noel Fielding and Sandi Toksvig).
But Hollywood made the move to the new
version. After seven years on the BBC original,
where he claimed to have been paid roughly
£70,000 a year, he doubled his wages. He was
simply being honest, but it made some people
angry. One of the 2013 runners-up, Ruby
Tandoh, called him a “peacocking man-child
lingering wherever the money is”.Interview continues on page 45. See overleaf
for recipes from Paul Hollywood’s new book Bake‘I don’t trust people now.
I’m a hermit. I like to be
in my dressing gown by
7 pm, watching a box set’
REX FEATURES, ANDREW STYCZYNSKI/NEWS GROUP NEWSPAPERS LTD