GREAT British Bake Off star Steven Carter-Bailey has revealed the extreme measures of how he kept his identity a secret during filming.

The 39-year-old shot to fame on the eighth series of the show in 2017.

The marketer, from Watford, got all the way to the final five years ago, but narrowly missed out on the top spot after Sophie Faldo was crowned winner.

Steven was among the first group of bakers to appear on the show when production company Love Productions decided to move the programme to Channel 4.

The switch from the BBC meant that GBBO had an incredible amount of attention from the press – and they had to take extra precautions to make sure that nobody got hold of the contestant's identities.

Speaking exclusively to The Sun about their ways of keeping themselves unknown to the public, Steven told us: "We were each assigned a press protection officer and then there were security on site 24/7 basically.

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"What we didn't see what we didn't see was the the perimeter security so they were the one keeping the photographers out.

"As we were baking in the tent, when we'd finished and we'd left we had to stop in the entryway and take our aprons off and give our aprons to an assigned member of the crew.

"So if anybody got photographed, it was a crew member. And we then looked like part of the crew. It was just stuff like that. And they were like, if you if you have dark glasses, please wear them."

But Steven and the rest of the bakers, including the likes of Liam Charles, Kate Lyon and Stacey Hart, didn't stop there with their efforts to keep their stint on the show under wraps.

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Filming for The Great British Bake Off took place on the grounds of Welford Park between 2014 until 2019, and returned to the country house and estate in Berkshire this year.

During his time on the hit show, Steven revealed that they usually filmed every weekend, so he would drive to the grounds from his home in Watford after working from home on a Friday.

The bakers and production crew would then have dinner and try and go to bed as early as possible for the 4am wakeup calls.

They stayed in various hotels, and were put in different ones to the judges and presenters, but because they were fully functioning hotels.

This meant that they all took on fake names to make sure the public staying there had no idea who they were.

"We checked in under aliases," Steven told us.

"So I was it's usually my mother's maiden name, so I was Steven Polhill.

"I was Steven Polhill For for 12 weeks."

Over the past five years, Steven has got up to some very exciting things.

He returned to the tent in 2019 and won the Great New Year Bake Off.

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The star is also host of the Feed My podcast.

Steven also joined the Pro Cook Cookery School as a baking teacher, and teaches four specialists classes.

• The Great British Bake Off 2022 airs Tuesdays at 8pm on Channel 4

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