After eight years judging Great British Bake Off, Dame Prue Leith is being replaced on the Celebrity spin-off. First joining the BBC baking competition in 2017, replacing Mary Berry, Dame Prue revealed last year she was taking a step back to explore other passions. Although she will still appear in the normal UK and US versions, this week it was announced her long-time friend Lady Caroline Waldegrave OBE would be stepping into her role on the Celebrity Bake Off special.

‘I’m getting a bit old and there are places I want to go to and other things I want to do,’ Prue said about wanting to get some time off in summer as the Bake Off filming schedule is usually quite extensive. Alongside Paul Hollywood, Lady Caroline, a former Managing Director and co-owner of Leiths School of Food and Wine, will be taking on the enviable task of tasting the delicious treats created by the bakers.

Here’s everything we know about her before the show returns later this year. In March last year Dame Prue, 84, confirmed she would be taking some time off from the celebrity version of Bake Off. ‘I’m not doing this year is the celebrity one and it’s mainly because these things are filmed back-to-back the whole way through the summer,’ she explained on This Morning. ‘You start in April, and you end in August and honestly, you get no time off. And so, I’m getting a bit old and there are places I want to go to and other things I want to do.’.

She went on to clarify she had no intention of stepping down from the original series or the US spin-off The Great American Baking Show. In a statement to Metro, Dame Prue said she ‘absolutely loves working on Bake Off and am looking forward to filming the next series and meeting our new bakers’. ‘I am only stepping back from the Celebrity series, which is just a question of the filming commitment involved as we make these shows back-to-back,’ she added.

Caroline Waldegrave, Lady Waldegrave of North Hill, 72, is the former managing director of Leiths School of Food and Wine, one of the most prestigious and respected cookery schools in the country. She purchased the business with former British Telecom Chairman and Chairman of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Sir Christopher Bland, in 1994. But after 33 years, in 2009 she retired and became a non-executive director on the board and was also chairman of the Guild of Food Writers for several years.

Since then, she’s ‘focused on imparting her wealth of cookery knowledge’ at Dudwell School, which is located on the site of her family home, Dudwell Field Farm. She’s also a director of the family’s organic dairy farm. Over the years Lady Caroline has appeared on TV shows including Chef School, MasterChef and Tricks of the Trade. She is also the author of several cook books, including Leith’s Cookery Bible, Cookery Course and Cookery School books (co-written with Dame Prue), Leith’s Easy Dinner Parties (co-written with Puff Fairclough and Janey Orr), Leith’s Fish Bible (co-written with CJ Jackson), The Healthy Gourmet, and the Low Fat Gourmet.

Lady Caroline is a long-time friend and colleague of Dame Prue, first meeting when she applied for a job at the Bake Off judge’s catering company in the 1970s. She was awarded an OBE in 2000 for services to the UK catering industry. When her Bake Off role was announced, she wrote on Instagram this week: ‘The news is out! I’m thrilled to announce that I will be one of the judges for this series @britishbakeoff @su2cuk.’.

The famous faces appearing on this year’s celebrity special includes the creator of Chicken Shop Date Amelia Dimoldenberg, Good Morning Britain host Kate Garraway, presenter Sarah Beeny , Loose Women’s Gloria Hunniford OBE and radio presenter Roman Kemp. Lady Caroline has been married to former Tory Cabinet minister and now life peer Lord William Waldegrave in 1975. The pair share four children – Katie, Liza, Jamie and Harriet.

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