Paul Hollywood

• 1. Introduction

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  In 2008, Paul Hollywood made a loaf that was said to be the most expensive bread in Britain. It was an almond and roquefort sourdough. The roquefort came from a French specialist at £15 per kilo, and the flour came from a miller in Wiltshire. Hollywood called the result a "Rolls-Royce of loaves." He is an English baker and chef, widely known as a judge on The Great British Bake Off. How did a young man who walked away from sculpture classes end up judging the nation's amateur bakers? And what else did a working baker from Wallasey find waiting for him once the cameras arrived?

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• 2. Bakery Beginnings

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  Wallasey, in Cheshire, is where Paul John Hollywood was born on the 1st of March 1966. His father, John F. Hollywood, ran a bakery. His mother was Gillian M. Hollywood, born Harman. Paul attended The Mosslands School, then studied sculpture at the Wallasey School of Art, which was based at Liscard Hall. He left that course to start work as a baker.

  York was where he first worked, in his father's bakery. That shop was the headquarters of a chain called Bread Winner, which eventually stretched down the east coast from Aberdeen to Lincolnshire. After York he worked in other bakeries on Merseyside.

  Hotel kitchens came next. He became head baker at several, among them The Dorchester, Chester Grosvenor and Spa, and the Cliveden Hotel. Then he left the United Kingdom for Cyprus and worked at two resorts there. When he came back to Britain, television producers were waiting.

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• 3. Screens and Pages

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  BBC One's The Generation Game and The Heaven and Earth Show were among his first television appearances, as a guest. ITV's This Morning and The Alan Titchmarsh Show also had him on. Food programming was his starting point, and he later moved into other areas, including motoring.

  In 2005, his book 100 Great Breads was named "Top Bread and Pastry Book" for that year by the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. He also became a guest speaker at food festivals. The Cumbrian Food Festival is one. The BBC Good Food Show and the Cake and Bake Show, both in London, are others.

  Children's television gave him a different audience, when he starred in Sadie J. In 2013, BBC Two broadcast Paul Hollywood's Bread, in which he offered advice on recipes for different breads. Some cakes appeared too, including the Danish pastry. Paul Hollywood's Pies and Puds, on BBC One, was another cookery series with his name on it.

  A new BBC programme launched in 2010, and it would turn him from a guest into a fixture.

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• 4. The Bake Off Judge

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  The Great British Bake Off has had Hollywood on its judging panel since it launched in 2010. Commentators have called him the "antidote" to judges such as Len Goodman or Simon Cowell on other reality programmes. The reasons given are his straightforward, honest manner and the fact that he judges only the finished product.

  Mary Berry sat beside him in those early years. The Guardian described their partnership as the show's "secret weapon" and possibly one of the best judging pairings reality television has produced.

  In September 2016, the production company Love Productions agreed a three-year deal to move the programme from the BBC to Channel 4. Hosts Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins said they would not follow. Berry soon announced the same. On the day she did, Hollywood announced he was staying.

  The format travelled to America as well. In May 2013, he began judging The American Baking Competition on CBS. In December 2017, he appeared on The Great American Baking Show, the second US version of the Bake Off idea.

  Not every moment went smoothly. In 2019, he remarked that a cake looked like "diabetes on a plate." After complaints, he apologised on his social media. In December 2020, a two-part Channel 4 series called The Great British Bake Off: Best Bits looked back at memorable moments from the show's first ten years.

  By then, he had also taken his appetite on the road, beginning with a drive across Europe in the spring of 2017.

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• 5. Road Trips

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  May and June 2017 saw Hollywood present Paul Hollywood's Big Continental Road Trip. It was the first of several travelling food series that took him far from the Bake Off tent.

  A 3000-mile culinary journey across America came in November 2019. The four-part Food Network series Paul Goes to Hollywood followed him from New York to Los Angeles on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

  Japan was next. The three-part Channel 4 series Paul Hollywood Eats Japan aired in April and May 2020 and sampled some of the finest culinary experiences the country has to offer.

  Mexico followed in mid-2022. In the three-part Channel 4 series Paul Hollywood Eats Mexico, he toured the country sampling authentic local cuisine.

  He was back on a British screen in May 2023. He appeared in the trailer for the BBC's Eurovision Song Contest coverage, in a year when the contest was hosted in Liverpool, not far from where he grew up.

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• 6. Highland Roots

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  August 2015 brought Hollywood to the BBC genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are? Researchers traced his family back through several generations.

  His maternal grandfather, Norman Harman, had served in the Army during World War II. He saw action in the Tunisia Campaign and at the Battle of Anzio. Further back, Hollywood's great-great-grandfather Kenneth MacKenzie had been a policeman in the City of Glasgow Police in the 1850s.

  The oldest story belonged to Donald MacKenzie, his great-great-great-grandfather. Donald was a crofter in Poolewe, in Wester Ross, and also worked as the post-runner between Poolewe and Dingwall. He carried the post on foot over 60 miles. He made that journey every week during his forties, for over a decade. Donald lived into his 80s.

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• 7. Racing Aston Martins

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  Racing entered Hollywood's life in 2015, when he made his debut in the Beechdean AMR Aston Martin Vantage GT4. His co-driver was Andrew Howard, founder of Beechdean Dairies. At the first round of the Britcar Trophy Championship, at Silverstone, the pair qualified second and took second in class in both races. The same year, he competed at Le Mans in the Aston Martin festival.

  GT Cup was another series he entered, with Jonny Adam as his partner, and the pair finished first in class. In 2016, he entered the British GT championship and drove the last three rounds with Jamie Chadwick as his partner.

  July 2017 brought a class win at the Dunlop endurance race at Silverstone in an Aston Martin GT4. In November 2017, he took part in his first 24 hour race, at Circuit of the Americas, finishing second in class.

  That same November, trouble was building away from the track.

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• 8. Private Life and Honours

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  Cyprus is where Hollywood met his former wife, Alexandra. He was head baker at a five-star hotel, and she was a scuba diving instructor. They later married on the island, and they have a son.

  In 2013, the couple separated after Hollywood had an affair with Marcela Valladolid, his co-judge on The American Baking Competition. They later reconciled. They separated again in November 2017, and the divorce came through in July 2019.

  In September 2023, Hollywood married Melissa Spalding in Cyprus, the island where his first marriage began.

  The 2024 New Year Honours named him a Member of the Order of the British Empire. The citation recognised services to baking and broadcasting, a pairing that began in a Merseyside-bred baker's early years in his father's shop.

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