Paul Hollywood, judge of the popular competition series The Great British Baking Show, is well
known for his congratulatory handshake and harsh judging. But Hollywood's life isn't
all about bread. From race cars to bad business ventures and everything in between, here's
what the star baker is like outside the Bake Off tent.
The blue-eyed baker was set to become the next Michelangelo in his teens. Following
in the footsteps of his mom, who was a graphic artist, he had joined Wallasey School of Art,
and taken a liking to sculpture. Well, it's not hard to imagine Hollywood as a sculptor.
Replace the dough scraper with a chisel, and there you have it.
Though Hollywood spent his school holidays helping out his dad, a professional baker,
he never dreamt of pursuing it as a career. When his father asked him if he wanted to
become a baker, Hollywood initially said no. Then, his dad offered to pay him 500 pounds
if he cut his long hair and joined the industry. He wrote in his book A Baker's Life:
"That put things in a different light for a seventeen-year-old!"
Overnight, he shaved his chest-length hair.
Once the decision was made, Hollywood started working in the family bakeries. By his early
20s, he was managing a whole bakery all by himself. While his friends went out clubbing
and stopped at the bakery in the morning, Hollywood went to bed early and woke up in
the wee hours of morning to make fresh loaves. He told the Daily Mail:
"It upset me a bit to miss out on partying, but baking was what I wanted to do."
After apprenticing at his dad's bakeries, Hollywood had moved on to working with reputed
hotels like Chester Grosvenor and later, the Dorchester. But instead of settling into the
cushy life, Hollywood bid goodbye to it. In 1996, he packed his bags and traveled 2,000
miles away to start a new life in the historic town of Paphos, Cyprus .
"My time in Paphos was an experience that changed my life. When I came here when I was
28, it was a real cultural shock for me."
In fact, until then, Hollywood had never traveled much away from home. His mom expected him
to come back in less than six months, but Hollywood ended up staying in Cyprus for six
years. He took up the head baker's position at a five-star seafront hotel called the Annabelle
and soaked in the culture, made new friends, and baked his best breads. And it was here
that he met his first wife, Alex, a scuba diving instructor who helped him bag his first
television gig. The Mediterranean country also exposed him to traditional Cypriot breads
like Laganes and Lavroche, recipes of which are included in his bestseller, 100 Great
Breads.
Alex and Paul Hollywood's marriage hit a rocky road in 2013 when The Great British Baking
Show got its American version, The American Baking Competition. The shooting for the CBS
show lasted four and a half weeks, during the span of which Hollywood had an affair
with his co-judge, American chef Marcela Valladolid. The news was a hard blow to Hollywood and
his wife's otherwise rumor-free marriage. The couple, however, patched things up after
Hollywood allegedly called the affair his biggest mistake, per Hello Magazine.
"Um, I'm not brutal for brutal's sake."
Just when their lives were getting back on track, there came another blow — an alleged
affair between Hollywood and Summer Monteys-Fullam, a barmaid he had met while organizing a birthday
party for Alex. After he and his wife split, Hollywood and Monteys-Fullam got together.
That romance ended after two years, when Monteys-Fullam claimed that Hollywood allegedly asked her
to sign a gagging order that prevented her from talking about their relationship to anyone.
Yes, even her mom, according to Mirror.
While Hollywood nursed this breakup, he met Melissa Spalding, his local pub landlady,
whom he has been reportedly dating since October 2019.
"Go on, say something nice."
"To say it's a disaster would be a humiliation to disaster."
For a man who preaches bread baking, one would imagine that selling a loaf would be a piece
of cake. But Paul Hollywood has had it rough. His first company, Hollywood Bread, only lasted
a few years beyond its 1999 London launch. After bringing a loss of over $300,000, Hollywood
Bread was liquidated in 2003 and ultimately dissolved by 2005. But Hollywood didn't give
up hope. In 2007, he set up Paul Hollywood Artisan Bread, which The Telegraph reports
was, quote, "inspired by the baking techniques he discovered on his travels to Cyprus, Egypt,
and Jordan."
Paul Hollywood Artisan Bread supplied bread to Harrods and Waitrose — popular supermarkets
in London. Meanwhile, his career in television was ramping up, and his first book was out
in the market. In 2010, The Great British Baking Show had begun to air on BBC. Because
of his television commitments, Paul hardly had time to nurture his bread company. Paul
Hollywood Artisan Bread had to be shut down in 2014, with debts of close to $70,000. It
was a, quote, "huge headache and a massive problem" for the celebrity bread-maker.
Three years later, Hollywood opened Knead Bakery and Coffee at Central London station
which, as fate would have it, was demolished to make space for a new entrance to the station.
Paul Hollywood turned a loaf of bread into a luxury item right before the 2008 Christmas
season. Those passing by the bread aisle at Harrods, London, might have been in for a
shock to come across a loaf that cost 10 times the normal rate. At $19 a loaf, The National
Association of Master Bakers had named it the most expensive loaf in Britain then. Hollywood
told The Telegraph that it was the best bread he had made, saying:
"If you think of the ordinary loaf of bread it's quite plain and often lacking in excitement.
If you were to compare it to a car it might be a Ford Fiesta for example. But this is
the Rolls-Royce of loaves."
And what bread would cost that much? An almond and Roquefort sourdough, apparently. The bread
was made with Roquefort cheese purchased from a producer in rural France; and Grade A flour
sourced from a miller in Wiltshire, England. Hollywood said:
"All the constituents of the bread are the finest money can buy. I have searched all
over the country and Europe to make sure the ingredients are the very best available."
When a checkered flag is around, Paul Hollywood whips up a new personality.
"I'm sort of a baker and part time racing driver."
Hollywood made his debut as a motor car racer in 2015 and has gone on to drive on prestigious
circuits such as Le Mans. He said in an interview that he took to motor racing after he was
approached by Aston Martin to try out one of their race cars. Hollywood told The Sunday
Times:
"I can go from eating cream cakes, straight into an Aston Martin and race it. It's a good
life."
Hollywood has been crazy about cars from the time he can remember. He used to play with
an Aston Martin DB5 Toy car — the one that features in the James Bond film Goldfinger,
as a child. But besides the love for cars, his yearning for a bit of anonymity is what
pushed him into taking up motor car racing as a passion. He told The Sunday Times:
"When I come here with a helmet on with a mirrored visor, no one knows who I am. My
name's on the car but that flashes by. For the first time I can be me, doing things I
want to do for me, not for everybody else."
Paul Hollywood grew up in a family where both his mom and dad baked well. On Saturdays,
his mom would make fruit pie with freshly-picked apples, rhubarb, or pears; his dad would bake
bread rolls. Hollywood helped out at his dad's bakery, filling doughnuts with jam, and making
tea.
Among his earliest memories of baking with his family is making ginger biscuits with
his mom and rolls with his dad. He told NPR:
"I must've been six, possibly seven years old, and my mum used to make [ginger biscuits]
quite a lot, actually, mainly over the weekend. [...] They really were the first time I ever
baked. [...] And that, with a cup of tea, is difficult to beat."
Hollywood also has a vivid memory of making rolls with his dad, when he was just 10 years
old. He told TV Times Magazine:
"It was a Saturday afternoon and we had Dickie Davies on. I still remember the taste and
smell as they came out of the oven. It was one of the best rolls I've ever had."
One can only imagine the discomfort inside the Bake-Off tent when, in 2019, The Sun reported
that Paul Hollywood earned nine times more than his The Great British Baking Show co-stars.
It is fair to note that, at the time, Hollywood was the only one of the team who had been
with the show since its inception. Prue Leith, Hollywood's fellow judge, and hosts Noel Fielding
and Sandi Toksvig, who was replaced in 2020 by Matt Lucas, came in much later.
Hollywood used to earn about $128,000 a year for his appearance as a co-judge on The Great
British Baking Off, when it aired on BBC. In 2016, when the series moved to Channel
4, Hollywood's colleagues quit as a sign of loyalty towards BBC. Not Hollywood. One could
say his loyalties lie where the pastry was. He was, however, criticized for following
the money.
"I don't have a heart."
"Yeah, that's not going to come as a big shock to people."
His salary increased to about $500,000 a year after the show moved to Channel 4.
Hollywood has earned a lot of dough by printing books about kneading dough. And this was even
before he was riding on the success of The Great British Baking Show. His first book,
100 Great Breads, came out in 2005 and was termed the "Top Bread and Pastry Book" by
The Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. It was published in 10 countries and in seven languages.
After The Great British Baking Show was launched in 2010, Hollywood made nearly $8 million
in book sales in the first five years. During this period, he wrote four books, which sold
593,000 copies. His 2012 book How to Bake made close to $3 million in sales alone, per
Daily Mail.
Hollywood quite strategically released books that rode on the coattails of his successful
series. Paul Hollywood's British Baking came out in 2014, coinciding with his appearance
on TV. Paul Hollywood's Bread coincided with his series Bread on BBC, and Pies and Puds
came out when his series Pies and Puds was airing on BBC in 2013.
Paul Hollywood always worked behind the scenes, crafting the best scone within the four walls
of the kitchen, until a television opportunity came banging on the door. One television show
led to another, and before he knew it, there were features about his hair and handshakes.
"It's the Hollywood handshake."
"Wow."
But did Hollywood want any of this? As it turns out, no.
He described himself as a shy person to Daily Express, saying:
"The guy on TV is the guy I hide behind. [...] You've got to entertain people and it's hard work.
I am exhausted at the end."
When Hollywood remained on The Great British Baking Show after his original co-stars left
the series, he told Radio Times:
"I became the most hated man in the country! It's not fun for someone that doesn't like
being in the limelight. I didn't set out to be on the telly, I set out to be a good baker.
And I didn't want this."
Paul Hollywood is fascinated by things that come with a baggage of history. Like ancient
bread-baking techniques of Cyprus, Egypt, and Jordan; a 12th-century church — a UNESCO
World Heritage site — in Paphos, Cyprus, where he got married; or a two-decade-old
F1 racing car that he restored after spending several thousands of dollars.
Home is where the heart is, they say. And since his heart is stuck in medieval times,
his first property was a 13th-century house in Canterbury, Kent. The four-bed property,
with its 600-year-old lead windows, terracotta flooring in the kitchen, and a medieval front
door, was one of the oldest private homes in the United Kingdom.
In the UK, houses that are of historic value are given either a 1 or 2 grade, depending
on when they were built and if they are of special interest. Grade 1 are the buildings
of the highest significance and include those such as The Buckingham Palace. Hollywood's
Kent home, which he remained in for over a decade, was a Grade 1 property as well.
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