RECIPE FOR SUCCESS

MARION MCMULLEN checks on the birthday cake as Dame Mary Berry turns 90

- MARION MCMULLEN

"MARY BERRY taught me everything I need to know," the Prince of Wales declared last month after competing in a Welsh cake-making challenge in Pontypridd.

Both William and his wife are big fans of the baking queen and Kate said one of her son Louis's first words was "Mary" because right at his height when he was one year old were all her cooking books in the kitchen bookshelf.

Dame Mary also famously baked alongside the royal couple during a special Christmas show and praised Kate as a "remarkable, enthusiastic cook".

The former Great British Bake Off judge was born in Born in Bath, Somerset, on March 24, 1935. She contracted polio when she was 13 and spent three months in hospital and was left with a "funny left hand" and a curved spine, which she later said "doesn't bother me at all".

Mary did not shine academically in school but excelled in cooking and moved to London when she was 21 and studied part-time at the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu culinary school, alongside jobs, doing cookery demonstrations and recipe testing.

"I've always worked very hard, early on taking any work that came my way," she said.

She became the cookery editor of Housewife magazine in the 1960s, followed by Ideal Home magazine, before landing her first TV role with Afternoon Plus in the early 1970s.