Nancy is about to launch her seventh book
Nancy Birtwhistle lives in Barton-upon-Humber(Image: nancybirtwhistle.co.uk)
In Nancy Birtwhistle’s opinion she is no different to anyone else her age. She comes from a generation of make-do-and-menders and said: “Lots of people can do what I do.
“They cook, bake, get out in the garden and do their own thing; as a generation it’s what we tended to do. A group of us girls used to make our outfits to go out dancing on a Saturday night – you could buy a length of fabric much cheaper than buying a dress.”
Nancy is about to publish her seventh book, Clean Magic, she has a four-page spread about her life and mission to “teach the world to clean” in the February issue of glossy monthly Country Living and a few months ago topped one million followers on her Instagram page. The Hull-born mum and grandmother, who is also a regular on TV with her top tips on eco cleaning hacks, said: “I never could have imagined this, down the years.
“They call it imposter syndrome, don’t they? Winning the Great British Bake Off [Nancy claimed the crown in 2014] gave me that platform to share other things I could do, but I never, ever thought it would come to this.
“I don’t think it has changed me in the slightest, though. I’ve had someone say to me, ‘you have over a million followers on Instagram, how does it make you feel?’
“To me, it’s a number. I really think of it as a group of like-minded people who want to do the same as me.
“I do get some great tips from my followers as well; it’s not just a one-way street. I always try to acknowledge them if I share them onwards.”
Nancy, who lives in Barton-upon-Humber with husband, Tim, tends to spend the winter months writing and is staying true to form, currently working on what will be her eighth book – and it will be a cookery one with “some exciting stuff going in it”. “Winter time can be dreary but I’ve got busy days,” said Nancy.
“There is nothing worse than on a glorious summer day being battened down at the computer, so I’ve been writing in the winter – since Covid, really. Each book takes about a year from start to finish.
“I put forward an idea, they then say yay or nay. All through last winter I was writing Clean Magic; then it’s like getting a massive piece of homework back and it goes off again and it visits a whole series of people – last week I got an actual physical book back, and I am pleased with it.”
Nancy’s hope with Clean Magic is that even if people are not particularly “green”, are “climate deniers” or “don’t believe the Earth is warming”, that they will appreciate her natural alternatives to chemical-laden products that are sold in supermarkets. “My message is to have a think about all these chemicals in your home, whether it’s in air fresheners, detergents, disinfectants.
“It’s looking at that micro level in your own home. I think everyone wants to be doing the best they can for their family.
“Clean Magic has my old favourite ‘tool box’ in there but there are plenty of new recipes as well, like my dishwasher detergent. There are different varieties because people’s water types are so different.
“It’s taken me ten years to come up with it; dishwasher detergent has really given me the runaround. At one point I thought it was beyond me.”
Inventing new, and natural, hacks tends to come about when her followers highlight a problem to her. “It might be something really obscure – like how to clean velvet.
“That one was sent to me just last week and I’ve not come up with it yet. It’s on my jobs-to-do list.”
What she has solved is the eternal problem of mould on the rubber seal inside the door of a washing machine. “I did try everything in the past – I even, back in the day, tried chlorine bleach and I stopped using that ten years ago.
READ MORE: ‘I tried making Great British Bake Off winner Nancy Birtwhistle’s lemon drizzle cake’
“Now I’ve come up with a green bleach that forms a lather and you leave it on the rubber overnight. It’s amazing and it’s obviously going to be a popular one.”
Nancy was delighted to be approached by Country Living magazine to feature in its February issue. “I like it as a magazine, and they have done me proud,” she said.
“I think it was an email that came from the publisher saying they would like to do a feature on me.” The article includes pictures of Nancy in her Barton kitchen, and in her garden cuddling one of her beloved rescue hens.
It talks of her as the “reluctant retiree” who left a job in 2007 after 35 years in the NHS and started looking around for something to “fill the gap”. She told the magazine: “I was very influenced by the Blue Planet series.
“I remembered seeing this turtle that had swallowed plastic and it was coming out of its mouth, so single-use plastic was the first thing I targeted. There and then I did away with clingfilm.”
Nancy said: “I did an interview last week for My Weekly and something’s coming up in the Sunday Times, but I don’t know which week.” Nancy said: “There are quite a few things in the pipeline.
“I’m not getting tired of it. I might have to have some more regular breaks, though, from social media as I am getting upwards of 100 messages a day.
“Some people will give me a ‘shopping list’ of stains they have got, and it’s impossible. Tim said to me, ‘people will suck the life out of you, you have to control it’, and he’s right.
“In the workplace, people have a start time and a finish time. It’s a sort of new year thing, I’ve decided to have one hour in the morning and then I don’t look at my phone until the one hour I give myself in the evening.”