We’re at a riverside club near her Oxfordshire home for our photoshoot and interview and it’s nice to be greeted by a woman with perfect manners, who looks as pleased to see you as she would when lifting a perfectly cooked chicken out of the oven. In her 91st year [her 90th birthday was on 24 March], she’s here with Freddie, one of her two working cocker spaniels, who, despite already having had an hour-long walk in the countryside, looks up at her imploringly. I know how you feel, Freddie. We all want to have a bit of attention from Dame Mary.
I first met her 31 years ago when she was plain Mrs Berry and I attended an Aga cookery course at her home. Three decades on, she’s as beady as ever, inspecting what she’s about to wear and complimenting her assistant on her pink jumper. She’s filmed a new six-part series, Mary at 90: a Lifetime of Cooking, in which she looks back at her long career on television, as well as concocting modern twists to some of her own favourite recipes, with six famous faces, including Jamie Oliver, Gabby Logan and Tom Allen.
ITV footage from the 70s shows Mary demure, round-faced, with perfect RP, in a chintzy blouse. But behind those periwinkle eyes and that fluting voice lies ferocious drive. “Life is competitive. And whether you’re going for a job, or playing a sport, it’s good to do everything well,” she says now.
She is also a culinary time capsule, noting (and using) the advent of five spice, fennel, fresh ginger. She can pinpoint the arrival of tin foil. “I was working for Home and Freezer Digest, and I remember the editor coming in and saying, ‘Look what’s arrived from America!’ The first thing we said was, ‘Do we use the shiny side or the dull side? Does it matter?’”
Today, she has written more than 70 books that have sold over five million copies. Despite her drive, it was Delia Smith who pointed out, years ago, visiting Mary and her husband Paul Hunnings at their home, that she was underpaid. “Oh, Delia was absolutely brilliant. She came to stay with her husband Michael and we chatted about all sorts of things. I mean, you should never discuss money, sex or religion. But we did discuss money. She said, ‘You’re not being paid enough for your writing. I know an agent, Felicity Bryan, and I’ll ring her tonight.’ And the next day I got a postcard from Felicity saying, ‘Can we meet?’ And I’m still with her agency for my books.” [Bryan died in 2020.]
Looking back at the archive footage, it’s clear that TV chefs today don’t know how lucky they are. Mary recalls her first appearance in the mid-70s on Good Afternoon, ITV’s magazine show, in which she was to demonstrate the principles of a freezer. “I wrote a book for Marks & Spencer about how to freeze things well, because if you put something in the freezer which is grotty, it will come out grotty.
“There was no background help [for the TV appearance]. I had to bring in everything, every pot, pan, knife. All the food, vegetables, fish, mince, seasoning. I would be picked up in a taxi in the dark and arrive at Thames Television, where the tables were still set with newspapers from last night’s bulletin. They’d build a kitchen, and stick a clock on the wall, but the drawers didn’t open. There was no drain; water from the tap would empty into a bucket beneath my feet. If I turned the tap on too strongly, to wash a cabbage, say, and got carried away chatting to Judith [Chalmers, the Good Afternoon presenter], the bucket underneath would overflow and we would be paddling in water.”
After her initial invitation, Mary became a regular, standing alongside Chalmers, showing viewers how to cook. She could hardly have known it, but her first job for the Electricity Board in Bath, demonstrating how electric ovens can create the perfect sponge, was ideal training.
Watching herself back, Mary is helpless with laughter. “My voice! It was so high-pitched. But I had one aim. And that was to get people to cook and enjoy it as much as I did.” Recipes would be provided for viewers, but only ones who bothered to send in that historical artefact, a stamped addressed envelope. “Ask young people today what an SAE is, and they just look at you,” she marvels. As for brand Berry, was there a specially curated look? Zero attention. “There was no make-up. No wardrobe. You just arrived in your own clothes. And I would bring in daisies I’d picked from the garden.”
When Mary made her debut on The Great British Bake Off in 2010, it cemented her name with a new generation. She landed the job after an audition, “But I said, ‘I do need someone with a second opinion, and [a rare moment of vulnerability] I’m really not very good at bread. It’s not my forte.’ So that’s how Paul Hollywood came. And gosh, he was very different from me. I don’t want tears. So, if something had collapsed in the middle, I’d say to a contestant, ‘Do you know what you could do with that? You could just scoop a little bit out, fill it with fruit and cream, and you’ve got a pudding.”
Later, when Bake Off moved to Channel 4 in 2017, she stayed with the corporation. “I feel very cherished by the BBC, and it was quite right I stayed with them,” she says. And so, Mary’s TV career continued, with series such as Classic Mary Berry and a plethora of Christmas specials.
Away from the screen, she likes to play croquet, read, walk her dogs and cook with her grandchildren. She is trim but doesn’t go to the gym. “Why go to the gym when you can walk a dog for an hour?” She has kept up with new food trends (she has a lot of plant-based recipes in her latest show) and technology. “You have to go with the trends, and yes, we are on Instagram.”
She regrets her parents weren’t around to see her being made a Dame at Windsor Castle in 2021. “I am a great believer in genes. And my father was a remarkable man. My parents set an amazing example to me. When I found that I was going to be made a Dame, I couldn’t ring and tell them, but they are up there and looking down on me, and I know they’re quite pleased,” she says, smiling. “Your own children don’t notice, of course.”
Mary enjoys a positive attitude, which helped following the death of her son William, who was killed aged 19 in a car crash in 1989. It was after this tragedy that she started teaching Aga courses at her home, although I recall there was no indication that she had been bereaved. She was just as charming and chirpy as she is today. Perhaps the whole routine helped keep up her morale.
“I think of William every day. Of course I do. And if he were to walk through that door over there, I would say, ‘Where the hell have you been?’ I’m still very proud of him. I think of the joy he gave us. He was a lovely child, but you have to step back and think – I had wonderful parents, I’ve got two more children, Annabel and Tom, and my grandchildren. I mean, it would be devastating if you only had one child. I am very fortunate. And I have a husband who is 93.”
She says the recipe for her marital success is that she steps out of the house when she can see an argument brewing. “Paul always says that the secret to our long marriage is his saying, ‘Yes, dear’ to everything, and then going his own way. But we don’t argue. If any disagreements come up, I open the back door and just go out and maybe pick some flowers or get some apples. It’s amazing if you can walk away.
“Of course, if I was living in a top-floor flat, that would be difficult. But we respect each other. And I’m very lucky. He has mellowed in his old age and he’s become very appreciative of me. So I look after him, and it’s a great pleasure. That’s what I promised to do. For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer. And we are very happy in our dotage.”
Not that I can see Mary having an argument about much, with anyone. She is totally charming and enjoys a good relationship with all her guests in the new series, particularly Jamie Oliver: “I didn’t get any school qualifications, and neither did he,” she says.
Which of her guests learnt the most from cooking with her? “Oh, Alan Titchmarsh,” she says immediately. “We made spaghetti with salmon, and he hadn’t a clue. But he was so keen. To me, the huge reward was that 10 days after we recorded the show, he sent me an email with a picture of a table, all laid with the pasta dish and a glass of red wine. He said, ‘I did exactly what you said, and I’m very proud of this.’”
She smiles. “He gets the star. That is what I love. People stop me in the supermarket and say, ‘You inspired me to cook’. That is what television does. It’s a huge cookery class, for two or three million people. If I do things well, people will make them at home.” That was the aim all those years ago. Still is.
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Mary at 90: A Lifetime of Cooking begins Tuesday 28th October at 7:30pm on BBC Two and iPlayer.
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