As Jo Brand found

She was intrinsically linked with cakes, even before landing her gig on Great British Bake Off Extra Slice.

But Jo Brand has admitted she has no time for fancy cakes, even though her husband Bernard insists on buying them for her.

So last birthday took matters into her own hands to get the treat she wanted.

‘I wasn’t going to let my husband buy my cake,’ she told an audience at the University of Kent in Canterbury last night.

‘He tends to go to very posh French patissiers and buy… you know those cakes that have got a thin layer of what looks like phlegm on top of it that covers everything?  And they have fruit on it too. Ugh! Fruit on cake what do you want that for?’

So to avoid such horrors she picked out her own, plumping for 'the most ersatz  children’s cake’ she could.

And as a finishing touch, she asked the store to ice the words: ‘You are a very old woman’ on it,   so she could get a laugh from her friends when the box was opened.

A few days later she went back to the store to pick up the personalised cake, and decided to check the message.

It read: ’Happy retirement Wendy.’

Which paints quite the picture of what happened at Wendy’s leaving do…

• What else Jo Brand said at the Linda Smith memorial lecture >>

Published: 2 May 2019