Nancy Birtwhistle
There’s more to Great British Bake Off 2014 winner Nancy Birtwhistle than meets the eye. Nancy is a self-taught home baker who only took up baking seriously when she retired from her full-time job as a practice manager for a GP’s surgery. And, like everything she turns her hand to, she became rather good at it.
Full of energy and brimming with ideas, Nancy is a force of nature and whether its growing her own fruit and veg to use in her recipes, rearing poultry (including the Christmas turkey), training her dog (who made it to Crufts) or doing a degree at age 40, she doesn't do things by halves.
Since winning Bake Off Nancy has discovered a whole new and engaged audience through social media. Starting in 2017 she decided to share a little of what she knows with her following in an interactive challenge called #365challenge. This included recipes, hints, tips and life hacks. Her audience loved her no-nonsense delivery and endlessly useful ideas and her community continues to grow both in the UK and across the globe.
After the launch of her cookbook Sizzle and Drizzle in 2019, she turned her attention to greener and more eco-friendly house cleaning. In response to a demand from her followers, she's now made it her mission to ditch toxic and harmful products. Through her own research and looking back at traditional know-how she has firmly established herself as ‘The Queen of Green’.
Nancy shares all of her knowledge and ideas for a more sustainable life in her best-selling books Clean & Green, Green Living Made Easy, The Green Gardening Handbook and, most recently, The Green Budget Guide (published Jan 2024). Tackling everything from eco cleaning, upcycling and making the most of your weekly shop to small-space gardening and creative crafts it’s back to the future for Nancy and her followers as they prove that greener living really is so simple and incredibly popular.
Nancy is a natural teacher and can regularly be seen giving demonstrations as large-scale food events. She has appeared at The Good Food Show, The Cake and Bake Show and countless regional food festivals. She is an accomplished speaker who is comfortable telling her story to many audiences as diverse as the WI to a room of female banking staff. You can also see Nancy making regular appearances on BBC Morning Live giving her tips, hacks and recipes.