Chef

Baking is therapy.

I can be a romantic. The way to every woman's heart is through her stomach. Food is at the core of everything.

When I get home at night, I always have a soak in the tub before changing into my dressing gown and slippers.

I like to remind the contestants where they are by playing the 'Bake Off' theme tune on my phone as they walk into the tent. They freak out, as it suddenly dawns on them that they're on the show.

Years ago, I saw a job for head baker for The Dorchester Hotel in London, and I didn't want to move away from the North West. But then I thought, 'I've got to do this for my career,' because I was very ambitious. So I went for it and got the job.

Making cake is one of the easiest things in the world.

Everyone has a favourite cake, pastry, pudding or pie from when they were kids.

The key thing is to educate not just kids but adults about what goes into food. You do that in any way you can, bread machine or not.

It's a great thing because I've said to my lad, 'What do you want to do today - football, shopping, playing a game?' and he says, 'I want to bake with you, Dad.' And he loves it, baking with me.

I love evangelising about baking and passing the word on, and I will carry on doing that.

There's something clean, simple, and even detoxifying about a loaf that contains nothing more than the best stone-ground, whole-meal flour, salt, yeast and water.

I've never been on a diet and never will.

New Year's resolutions generally don't work for me. Or I don't work for them. I make them, like everyone else, but I can't think of one I have stuck to for more than 24 hours.

I don't feel 50. I'm still ambitious, and I've only just got my licence to race sports cars. I race for an Aston Martin team called Beechdean, and it's a huge challenge.

Anything that has more buttercream than it does cake is going to be a no-no for me.

I was filming in Roscrea in Co Tipperary. I had great fun watching monks in the monastery there making bread. They even offered me a job as their main baker. One of them said I would make a good monk, but I told him there was a slight problem because I was married.

I want to pass on my secrets to people who are going to say, 'I have realised that I love baking, and now I'm going to make my bread and sell it at the local farmers' market,' or who might say, 'I am going to use the local Post Office in our village to sell my cakes.' I want to give them that little bit of fire.

I have always said I would love to go to America, and with a name like Hollywood, it's perfect isn't it?

I drove from Naples to the Amalfi coast in an Alpha Romeo 1969 Spider, which was lovely. There have been lots of movies made down there, and I felt a bit like James Bond - the driving is quite hairy. The locals have mopeds, but you wouldn't catch me on a bike on those roads. A tank would be safer!

The real Paul Hollywood is shy.