Alex Hollywood talks about making bread with the zeal of a recent convert.
She never knew how easy it could be before.
Or how therapeutic to channel all of life’s frustrations into some vigorous kneading.
So when did she start baking bread, properly? ‘Just over a year ago. I never really needed to before.’
So, let’s just clarify, she never made bread for her husband (her soon-to-be-ex being, of course, The Great British Bake Off’s Paul Hollywood, perhaps Britain’s most famous baker)? ‘No, never,’ she says. ‘But I make it now!’
Just over a year ago was when the Hollywood marriage fell apart for good.
It was one of the saddest splits in showbiz; particularly savage on Alex, who insists she had always been loyal to the man who wooed her with freshly baked croissants when he was a complete unknown.
Alex Hollywood, 54, spoke about the future of her career and home life following her divorce from TV Bake Off star Paul Hollywood whom she was married to for twenty years
There had been a very public hiccup in their 20-year marriage back in 2013, when ole blue eyes Paul had gone Stateside to film the US version of Bake Off, and promptly embarked on an affair with his pretty young co-judge, Marcela Valladolid, then aged 34.
Alex, 54, says she swallowed the hurt, then, because of their teenage son Josh, and because ‘it was the right thing to do’.
She rephrases that. ‘Because I believed I was doing the right thing. I did, absolutely.’
Paul was quick, that time, with the mea culpa.
Once his betrayal had hit the headlines, he apologised profusely, saying it was the biggest mistake of his life, and pointing out ‘actually, I still love my wife’.
Alex, although devastated – she said later ‘It was the one time in my life when I stopped eating and cooking’ – gave him another chance because, as she insists today, ‘I think everybody’s entitled to one mistake.’
Emphasis on the ‘one’.
His second affair, though, brought down the curtains on their marriage.
This one happened pretty much on the doorstep, which somehow made it worse.
This conquest was even younger too – aged 23 to his 52 years.
Paul struck up a liaison with barmaid Summer Monteys-Fullam at the local pub in Kent while arranging a birthday party for Alex.
Tongues were wagging locally before the gossip reached the national newspapers.
Within weeks, the pair would be snapped on holiday together with Summer making a rather ill-advised comment on social media that Paul had turned her ‘from a girl into a woman’.
It was hastily deleted. But imagine being the wife in this scenario. Perhaps it was inevitable that she could not forgive again.
‘That one was different,’ Alex concedes, of the second affair. ‘It happened again and it was a done deal, my marriage was over.
'From the minute I knew, it was over.’
She stumbles over her tenses a little. ‘It is over. There is nothing.’
She says she could not forgive again, even though the consequences – pulling the rug from under her feet, pretty much – were so vast.
Today she speaks with a sense of disbelief.
‘It’s such a big thing to comprehend, to end a marriage. But I had to do the right thing, and to have self-respect as well.’
The sense of shock – and survival, interestingly enough – is still palpable today, as she clangs pots and pans around in the kitchen they once shared.
Alex (pictured with Paul in 2015 at the National Television Awards in London) chose to end her marriage after Paul's second affair and said she did so for her self-respect
It’s a vast and well-appointed space, but homely too.
The kitchen is the heart of any home, particularly so theirs.
They met in more exotic climes – she was working as a scuba-diving instructor in a hotel in Cyprus; he was the resident baker.
She’s said to have helped get him his first role in television, when a production company approached a hotel she worked for looking for a good face to feature and she encouraged them to look at him.
Before fame crept in, they made a formidable team.
‘We did. A great team. He was excellent out in front and I was always very good behind the scenes.
'At home he was the baker, but I was the cook.’
They both always said that food brought them together. She is a natural hostess.
She is making our lunch today and there’s French onion soup followed by a rather decadent white-chocolate bread and butter-type pudding, devised by her to use up all those baked goods her husband would bring home.
‘This one came about when Paul had lots of stale croissants. I hate anything going to waste.’
What a team indeed. And what a pickle she has now been left in. You see, Alex was a food writer, with a promising career.
She has brought out two cookbooks, although book number two, Cooking Tonight, came out with little fanfare in 2017.
She admits today that she did not promote it as much as she might have, because she knew that would invite more speculation.
In a nutshell, she parked her own cookery career to focus on their marriage.
‘There was a lot of attention on his first affair, so I thought maybe it was better if I focused more on getting us back together, back on the right road, I mean.
'So yes, I probably did put the brakes on it [her food writing] a little.’
Today, with a career to rebuild as well as a home life, she is inching back into the public arena. What a tricky route for her to negotiate, though.
I think everybody’s entitled to one mistake
Her recipes – which we are featuring in Weekend today – are all about family and memory and shared experience.
She says, and genuinely means, things like, ‘Cooking, for me, has always been something you do for your family and people you love.’
Even if she wanted to erase her husband from the conversation – she doesn’t – it would be hard.
He has said himself the thing that really brought them together was a love of food.
‘You can still be a family after a divorce,’ she counters.
‘I like having a houseful. I love the hustle and bustle when friends and family get together. It was always like that.
'I learned to cook watching my mother and grandmother do it, and then obviously being married to somebody who was very much involved in food added another dimension.
'I had the understanding of how a proper kitchen works, and that thing of enjoying foods and discussing foods.
'It’s what I’ve always done with my family.
'It’s what I did during my marriage. Now, when my son and I go out to eat, we’ll discuss the food endlessly.’
Since the split, she has never cooked more.
‘For me, it’s quite therapeutic. I can think while I’m cooking.
Alex (pictured posing for her cookbook 'Cooking Tonight') revealed she learnt to cook by watching her mother and grandmother, before marrying Paul who was very much involved with food
'Some people go and play tennis or go for a run. For me, I’ll put together some food and be thinking about flavours that work.
'It’s comfort eating.
'People think comfort eating is about stuffing your face with food that isn’t very good for you, but actually, you’re nourishing yourself with things that are going to make you feel nice, happy, bring back good memories.
‘For me, food is a positive thing. Making it offers a calm time. It’s a quiet time.’
There are changes to the menu, though.
‘Since Paul went I don’t cook as much red meat, so probably more fish and salads.’
She can’t win when it comes to publicly sharing her foodie expertise, though.
I put the brakes on my career to save my marriage
After news of her husband’s new relationship broke, she Tweeted a recipe called Summer Berry Tart, using the hash-tag #easy. You can imagine how that was interpreted.
She rolls her eyes. ‘It was a recipe. I didn’t actually say “easy Summer tart”.
'People wanted it to be that, but it really wasn’t.’
It would have been quite clever, though.
‘Oh it would have been very funny, but what’s the point in mud-slinging? There’s a child involved – my son will always be my baby.
'When something breaks down, there is hurt.’
Alex and Paul (pictured together earlier in their marriage) met while she was working as a scuba-diving instructor in a hotel in Cyprus where he was the resident baker
The public nature of that hurt is stinging, but in this case the gossip was local too. I ask if it is hard to read about your marriage in the tabloids.
She says it is as hard to know everyone in the village is talking about it, too.
‘Everybody knew. Everyone knows me. They all knew Paul.
'It’s a small community. Everyone knows what went on.’
She is working on her next collection of recipes but after spending a few hours in her company, you can’t help wish Alex Hollywood would come up with another sort of book too – one where the recipes involve how to stay dignified when your husband runs off with a barmaid young enough to be his daughter.
This is a woman who manages to convey the shock of having her life come crashing down around her, while still staying very much in survivor mode.
When we retire to the sitting room to talk about where she goes from here, she is painfully honest about how her emotions still fluctuate wildly.
‘Well, it is a grieving process,
