'I HAVE NO WISH TO LIVE TO 105 LIKE MY MOTHER'

THE NATION'S SWEETHEART | DAME MARY BERRY ON AGEING WELL, HIDDEN TALENTS AND ROYAL ENCOUNTERS

- LARA KILNER

She may be celebrating her 88th birthday this year but Dame Mary Berry has no plans to slow down. The culinary icon, who has 70-plus cookbooks to her name (yes, we did the maths and that’s one for every year of her adult life), recently launched the latest products in her homeware range.

And although judging the soggy bottoms on The Great British Bake Off is now a distant memory, she’s never far from our TV screens, – with plans for a new show or two this year.

Here, Mary, who lives in Buckinghamshire with husband of 57 years Paul, talks about her guilty food pleasures and what she’d bake for her favourite royals…

 Hi, Mary! You’re known for cooking meals from scratch but surely you have days when you don’t?

I certainly have days when I don’t want to cook but I do a lot of batch cooking now there’s only the two of us at home. I will make a lot of fishcakes and put them in the freezer, and it’s a jolly nice feeling when it comes to 6pm and I can cook them frozen with lots of vegetables – easy.

We imagine a perfectly set dinner table every night…

Not at all, not now it’s just my husband and I. But we always sit at the table, that’s just us. Eating in front of the television is not something we do. I might stand up eating a canapé but I’m mostly relieved to sit down at the end of the day.

Do you ever have a takeaway?

I do buy pizzas. But then I’ll bring them home and put all my sun-dried tomato paste on top and some fresh tomatoes and Parmesan cheese.

Would you admit to ever buying ready meals or using a cake mix?