When Poppy O’Toole got her first job in a pub peeling potatoes, she had no idea she’d end up going on to become Britain’s ‘Potato Queen’ with more than 5.5 million followers on social media - you’ll probably recognise her from BBC 1’s Saturday Kitchen. Her love of all things spud began in lockdown when, after nearly 10 years of working in professional kitchens, the Michelin-trained chef lost her job in London due to hospitality grinding to a halt. Moving back home to Bromsgrove, she started filming herself making her favourite recipes and sharing them on TikTok as Poppy Cooks.

Her recipe revealing how to recreate a McDonald’s hash brown at home went viral and so she began to share more videos of the potato variety, leading to a ’25 days of Christmas potatoes’ series, which helped cement her status as ‘Potato Queen’ and led to her publishing Poppy Cooks: The Food You Need cookbook. She’s been on This Morning with Cat Deeley and Ben Shephard, danced with TV chef Rosemary Shrager, did a did a Mis-Teeq rap for Alesha Dixon, came fourth on Celebrity Weakest Link, was one of the judges on BBC’s Young MasterChef and appeared on Celebrity Mastermind where her specialist subject was potatoes. She classes meeting Sesame Street’s Elmo and having a potato puppet made just for her as ‘probably’ her best achievement of 2024. Frankly, there’s not many people who have that claim to fame.

We caught up with her at Holly Hill Church School in Rubery where she was teaching children how to cook with a slow cooker as part of the Tesco Fruit & Veg for Schools campaign - a £4 million project to give children a healthy, nutritious boost thanks to daily fruit and veg and slow cookers. “When I was peeling potatoes in a pub, I’d never have thought I’d be ‘Potato Queen’ and really busy on TV and social media,” said Poppy, from Bromsgrove. “I really put it down to timing and luck. My little brother and sister were into TikTok and a recipe video came up. Until then, I’d thought TikTok was just about dance moves. So I made some churros and shared it and my little sister was really excited. I found I got a buzz from doing it. I made some hash browns using the McDonalds recipe they put out during lockdown and that video got a million views. It was astonishing, it was wild.

“Next I did some German Cottage Potatoes and that did well and I thought I can see a pattern here. I love potatoes because they are accessible and easy to cook. When it came to the second lockdown in the November and everyone was at home, I decided to do 25 days of potatoes and went through my potato repertoire. And I got hundreds of thousands of followers. In some ways I felt quite exposed. I remember one person criticised my food and it was upsetting. I felt like I didn’t mind them criticising me but not the food because it’s really good.”.

One day, Poppy made a voiceover video, called it ‘Potato TikTok’ and ‘blew up the internet’. As a result, she was contacted by a Bloomsbury publisher who offered her a book deal. TV producers then began knocking on her door, inviting her onto their sets. “That night I went to bed with 200,000 followers and I woke up in the morning and had a million,” explained Poppy, who is still based in Worcestershire. “I thought oh my god, something had gone wrong but people loved it and they were watching it across the world.

“I just said yes to everything. I love doing TV. It’s completely different to cooking in front of your phone at home. It feels like being in the kitchen again, I love the pressure of it. It’s really good fun. Sometimes I forget it’s going on TV and I just end up singing, like when I rapped a bit of Miss-Teeq to Alesha Dixon.”. When the Sesame Street producers brought Elmo over to the UK for a tour, they got in touch with Poppy, created a special potato puppet and invited her to film with them. “Elmo has to be one of my absolute highlights,” said Poppy, who has just released her fourth cookbook. “They made a potato puppet just for me. It was for their social media to promote Elmo coming to the UK and it went onto their YouTube channel. I didn’t get to keep the potato puppet, sadly.”.

Back in the Birmingham classroom, Poppy whipped the kids into joyful delight when it came to peeling, chopping and cooking vegetables to make a veggie casserole as part of the Tesco Fruit & Veg campaign. More importantly, they all enjoyed eating it, with some asking for seconds and even thirds! “Being able to get kids involved in cooking is great, a lot of children watch my videos, which is nice,” said Poppy, who has also shared videos on how to make watermelon pizza slices and banana pops in the freezer.

“It’s about getting kids seeing more fruit and veg, understanding that pumpkins are not just for carving at Halloween but that you can eat them too. It’s about them exploring the journey of food, trying things they’ve not tried before. And, if they’ve helped cook it, they’re more likely to try it. “The kids at Holly Hill Church School have been great. Some of them hadn’t seen peas and sweetcorn and leeks before and they really enjoyed eating the meal from the slow cooker afterwards.