Bake Off star John Whaite says he was rushed to hospital after being hit by a car on Tuesday night (6 January).
The Strictly Come Dancing finalist, who won the third series of The Great British Bake Off in 2012, shared details of the close call in an Instagram Story.
“Last night I got run over (seriously),” the 36-year-old wrote. “I rolled up the bonnet damaging it and the windscreen, before splatting onto the road and crawling to the pavement, where some angel of a human threw his coat around me and waited with me for an ambulance.”
He claimed the doctors who treated him at the hospital had said the crash “could have been fatal” had he not been “16 stone of muscle”.
“Moral of the story, build strong muscle and core strength, and don’t wear black while crossing the road in the dark when an idiot comes speeding without looking,” he said.
Whaite told his followers that he had been “scanned and poked and prodded and I’m OK. Still gay though.”
He also clarified: “For the avoidance of doubt, in my last post I said ‘speeding’. I used the term figuratively rather than literally.
“I meant: it was sudden and shocking. I don’t know what speed the driver was going. But it was enough to skittle me up onto his windscreen and down onto the floor.”
As well as winning Bake Off, Whaite made history in 2021 when he competed in the 9th series of Strictly Come Dancing, for which he was partnered with professional dancer Johannes Radebe.
The duo became the BBC show’s first male same-sex couple and went on to place second, losing out to Rose Ayling-Ellis and Giovanni Pernice.
Whaite lives in Leeds with his husband, graphic designer Paul Atkins, with whom he runs a brownie business. He continues to bake and publish recipe books.
He also briefly had an OnlyFans account in 2025 – in September last year he told one of his followers that he had made around £270,000 on the platform in 11 months before quitting.
In November, he went public about his five-year use of illegal anabolic steroids, explaining that he began using steroids during lockdown only to realise that they were worsening his body dysmorphia and bulimia.
He said that the drugs also caused serious side-effects, including acne, an unregulated sex drive and shrunken testicles.
“Steroids have made me want to end my life,” he captioned the post. “That stops now. I choose life. I choose health. I choose love. I choose a simpler life.”
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