Prue Leith snapped her Achilles tendon while filming the opening scene for the new series of the Great British Bake Off, the judge has revealed.
Leith, 79, was playing a lion in a Wizard of Oz-themed sequence when she felt a “hammer blow” to her ankle.
She has now been strapped up in a “Beckham Boot” and is being wheeled around in a wheelchair or making her way about on crutches as she recovers.
Writing about the incident in the Spectator, she explained: “I leap out on to the yellow brick road, roaring — I feel a hammer blow to my ankle, and end up whimpering like the Cowardly Lion I’m portraying. I have snapped my Achilles tendon.
“Danny the medic…doses me with painkillers and sticks my foot in a bucket containing more ice than water.
“Soon the agony of that has wiped out any injury pain. An hour later I’m back in my lion suit, this time held up by Dorothy and the Tin Man, one on each side. We grin at the camera. ‘Welcome to The Great British Bake Off!’”
One moment of the opening sequence proved to be a huge talking point as it saw newly-single Paul Hollywood playing the Tin Man and saying he "did not have a heart".
In response, Noel Fielding quipped: "Yeah, that's not going to come as a big shock to people."
Later on, when Fielding, 46, said he believed he had a dream, Sandi Toksvig, 61, said: “I’m not sure it wasn’t a dream, Paul still doesn’t have a heart.”
The skit came after Hollywood's acrimonious split from his ex girlfriend, Summer Monteys-Fullam, 24, earlier this summer.
