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The charismatic winner of The Great British Bake Off 2012 wants us to put the simplicity back into cooking. John Whaite talks margaritas, antiques and trash TV
It's pretty rare that I get a weekend off and in my line of work every day involves something different. Luckily, however, I can do a lot of it from home so that's where I'm usually to be found. My partner Paul [Atkins, a graphic designer] and I live between Blackheath and Woolwich in south-east London, in an area where, I recently discovered, Fanny Cradock used to live. I feel I am channelling one of my idols just by going home - Paul and I are like the new Johnnie and Fanny.
If we're going out, I prefer to do it on a Friday night rather than a Saturday so I've got the whole weekend to acclimatise back into sobriety. We'd go to a nice restaurant - obviously I like to eat, that's no secret - and have some good food or something really indulgent, like curry or a Chinese meal, and maybe a few cocktails. Margaritas are my drink of choice at the moment thanks to [the actress] Cleo Rocos, who got me hooked on the tequila. We'd come home not too late and have a long lie-in on Saturday morning. I rarely get to do that, because when I'm on breakfast television I have to wake up at 5am and trundle across London in the rain.
Great British Bake Off recipe: how to make kouign-amann
On Saturdays we love going to Greenwich retro market. We're complete hoarders. You have to get there really early, for about 10am, because the vendors unload their vans and people come and swipe it up immediately. We usually find some little bit of furniture or whatnot, and then we'll go to the new Peyton and Byrne that's just opened in Greenwich and have coffee and cake and sandwiches.
Afterwards I'll probably have to do a bit of work in the kitchen, testing and photographing new recipes. This isn't spontaneous cooking: a lot of meticulous planning goes into it so even though it's what I love to do, it still feels like...