From tragedy to TV - LILLIAN GRABS HER CHANCE

Bake Off's smart cookie doesn't want brownie points because of her disability

Five years ago, Canterbury's Lillian Wrigglesworth would never have dreamed of entering a reality TV show like The Great Kiwi Bake Off.

"I'd never have done it," she says. "It just wasn't me." But just over a year ago, while making a quiche, she found herself filling in an application for the cooking programme.

"I don't know why I did it - it was totally random," admits Lillian, one of 10 contestants on the TVNZ 1 show. "But that's the new me doing things I wouldn't have done before. After what's happened, I've realised you have to go out and try new stuff, and make every day count because you never know what's around the corner." What happened to Lillian, 57, was a terrible freak accident that led to her losing her leg. At the end of 2019, she slipped on wet tiles while leaving a restaurant, suff ering multiple injuries to her left leg, including a shattered kneecap. 

“When I went to hospital, they didn’t realise the femoral artery behind my knee was crushed,” explains Lillian. “There’s only a six-hour window to repair it and it took too long. None of my bone injuries healed because I only had a thin vein of blood running down my leg. I was also left with lots of blood clots behind my knee.”