The popular Great British Bake Off host Santi Toksvig has announced that she will be leaving the show after three years.
The presenter has co-hosted the show with Noel Fielding since 2017, but now she says it’s time for her to focus on other things, namely her “other work“.
Toksvig joked in a tweet: “As my waistline will testify, Bake Off is an all-consuming show“.
“Bake Off is a wonderful programme“, she went on to say more earnestly, “which has already proved it can happily withstand a change of hosting personnel“.
Here she refers to the change in presenters when Bake Off moved from the BBC to Channel 4, where Toksvig and Fielding took over from the popular presenting duo, Mel and Sue (Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins).
Bake Off has indeed shown that it is able to maintain its popularity despite big changes to both its hosts and its judging panel, with Mary Berry also stepping down to make way for Prue Leith back in 2017.
At the news of his co-host’s departure, Noel Fielding expressed via Instagram how he would “miss Sandi comically and personally“, but noted that “we were lucky to have her for 3 amazing years.
“Good double acts are a rare and magical beast!” he said, noting on Twitter that he felt like “Tom without Jerry“, or a “Mick without a Keef“.
Ian Katz, Channel 4’s director of programmes, said: “We are immensely grateful for Sandi’s contribution to the show.
“We will miss her warmth and wit, not to mention her endless willingness to be the butt of jokes about being the least tall person in the Bake Off tent.”
Toksvig will however still appear on The Great Celebrity Bake Off for Stand Up To Cancer, which will be broadcast in the spring.
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