{"id":392055,"date":"2026-01-26T22:59:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T22:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/392055\/"},"modified":"2026-01-26T22:59:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T22:59:08","slug":"nigella-lawson-confirmed-as-new-great-british-bake-off-judge-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/392055\/","title":{"rendered":"Nigella Lawson confirmed as new Great British Bake Off judge | Television"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nigella Lawson has been announced as the new judge on The Great British Bake Off. She replaces Prue Leith, who stepped down after nine seasons of judging contestants\u2019 culinary creations, so she could spend summers enjoying her garden<\/a>, explaining: \u201cI\u2019m 86 for goodness sake!\u201d<\/p>\n

Lawson will join the programme for its next series, the 17th, which will launch later this year. She will serve alongside Paul Hollywood, who will continue in the role he has held since the baking competition launched on BBC Two in 2010.<\/p>\n

Lawson says: \u201cI\u2019m uncharacteristically rather lost for words right now! Of course it\u2019s daunting to be following in the footsteps of Prue Leith and Mary Berry before her, great dames both, but I\u2019m also bubbling with excitement. The Great British Bake Off<\/a> is more than a television programme, it\u2019s a national treasure \u2013 and it\u2019s a huge honour to be entrusted with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leith says: \u201cI\u2019m thrilled that Nigella is to experience brilliant Bake Off. She\u2019s sassy, fun and she knows her onions \u2013 and her croissants, cake and crumble.\u201d<\/p>\n

The TV chef has taken a break from British screens in recent years. Her last series, Nigella\u2019s Cook, Eat, Repeat aired on BBC One in 2020, and she has appeared more on Australian television in the years since. She was a judge on the Australian culinary competition My Kitchen Rules in 2022 and 2023, having previously been a guest judge on the country\u2019s version of MasterChef.<\/p>\n

Lawson has worked on Channel 4 before, with her first cooking series Nigella Bites appearing on the station. She was also previously a judge on a culinary show for the broadcaster when she appeared on The Taste<\/a>, in which contestants prepared a single spoon of food for her, Anthony Bourdain and French chef Ludo Lefebvre.<\/p>\n

She joins The Great British Bake Off at a point when its ratings are far below their peak. On Channel 4 the show has never reached the viewing figures it achieved on BBC One, where it averaged 10 million viewers, but was nonetheless been a ratings success for <\/a>the broadcaster. In recent years, however, numbers have slipped, declining every year since 2020 \u2013 bar the 2025 series, which rose by about 600,000 from 2024 to a total of 7.26 million for the first episode of season 16.<\/p>\n

Channel 4\u2019s Ian Katz said: \u201cWe\u2019re incredibly excited about the marriage of two great British icons: Bake Off and Nigella \u2026 this summer\u2019s series will be as mouthwatering a prospect as her chocolate Guinness cake.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nigella Lawson has been announced as the new judge on The Great British Bake Off. She replaces Prue…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":392056,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-392055","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}