(Bonus Episode) John Lithgow on his Great British Bake Off appearance

In this bonus episode, John Lithgow recalls appearing on the celebrity edition of The Great British Bake Off, his attempt to make a Swiss roll which was deemed 'not sellable in any cake shop', as well making a Winston Churchill gingerbread man. 

Ruthie's Table 4, made in partnership with Moncler.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You were listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
You were actually as a contestant. I've done my research.
I thought that I saw it on Celebrity Bakeoff.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yes, yeah, I was a hapless baker, a hapless celebrity
baker on The Great British Bakeoff. I was a catastrophe
with a camera floating above my trembling fingers as I
And you know there are those three or four different categories.
I did all right with anything I could rehearse beforehand,

(00:34):
but when they sprung the technical category, it's calling me
with oh my god. It would have been fair for
anyone who really is a good baker, but I am not.
And I discovered just what a catastrophe I am.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
So they didn't. You didn't know you had to make
that recipe?

Speaker 2 (00:53):
No, no, that way. I was told, we're going to
have you make a Swiss role, something I had never
heard of in my life. And I, oh god, I
could tell you the whole story, but bottom line, I
forgot to put the flour in and it was, oh
my god, it looked like a pile of muck.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
I know, but you know, I bet that was really
good because there's nothing like a flowerless chocolate cake. So
probably a flowerless swell was really ahead of its time.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Well it was unprecedented for sure, but oh my god.
You know the judgment that they passed on my on
my creation was not sellable in any cake shop.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
Oh, I thought, criteria, that is.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
The worst review I've ever heard in my life.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
He's a very poor criteria.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
My wife had had a T shirt made up for me,
it's a Christmas present that said not sellable in any
cake shop.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
That's a whole news. The idea that television has become
this It usould be about success. How smart were you
to win a game? How smart were you to guess
a person's identity? How clever were you to do something?
And now it's about how poor are you?

Speaker 2 (02:10):
Know?

Speaker 1 (02:10):
How inadequate?

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Are you?

Speaker 1 (02:13):
Fired? Or you have to leave the show. That's why
I could be a judge. I tried to do it,
and I just was too empathetic to.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
The real You would be allowed to judge you're too kind,
I would, Yeah, you are literally I.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Don't know, but it's just horrible that sense of you.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
Know, yeah, I accepted defeat. I said, I understand every
every one of these shows needs a failure, and I'm
happy to embrace that role. In the case of the
four of us, there's win place show and not syllable
in any cake shop. Yeah, that was me.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
I think that you should be quite proud to be
not sellable, so once you go into a cake shop anyway.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
Well, all my English friends probably lying said it's made
me enormously popular in English. Fortunately, Winston Churchill was plenty salable.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
You don't mean they wins. So what was Winston church
I played Winston church I know that, But did you
make a cake?

Speaker 2 (03:09):
There was another challenge where you had to make something
out of twenty four different segments of biscuit which could
be assembled to create for the final creation. And I
decided to make ten Downing Street with Winston and Clemmy
and various props, and I did practice it. I did

(03:32):
a pretty decent Downing Street gingerbread house with a little
Winston Churchill gingerbread man, all painted, you know, with icing,
and I was all prepared for that segment of the
bake off. I was already I thought this is going
to be my strong suit. It turned out I came
up short. There were only twenty three rather than twenty

(03:53):
four little biscuit pieces, so I was disqualified. It came
out beautifully, but I couldn't even compete.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
I'm never gonna watch this television show again. Directly to
Cancer with Something Yeah, thank you for listening to Ruthie's
Table four in partnership with Montclair