SHE has topped the charts and hung out with The Beatles and David Bowie.

But Glasgow songstress Lulu faced a new challenge when she agreed to join Joanna Lumley, Jennifer Saunders and Dame Edna Everage in The Great Comic Relief Bake Off.

As the singer found out the hard way, having once won Rear Of The Year does not make your fruit tarts immune from that greatest of Bake Off sins - the soggy bottom.

Growing up in Glasgow in the 1950s and 1960s, she said she learned to love sweets and cakes, but not how to make them.

"I wasn't brought up in a household where you'd smell baking from the kitchen every afternoon," she said. "My mum did basic cooking and I learned how to do that. I've always had a sweet tooth. I'm Glaswegian so it comes with the territory. But in our house it was all about getting money to buy sweeties, not making cakes."

She added: "When I agreed to do Bake Off one my friends emailed me, 'Do you know how difficult this is?'. I said, 'No - I don't bake', to which she replied, 'You idiot!' ... Now that I've done it, I know what she meant!"

So as well as contributing to a good cause, Lulu now has a new skill, one that is coming in very useful where her two grandchildren are concerned. Five-year-old Bella and two-year-old Teddy are the children of Jordan, Lulu's son with celebrity hairstylist John Frieda, and are regular visitors at her London home.

"Now I bake with them too, which is great," she said. "My own mother only started baking when she had grandchildren so maybe it's the same for me."

Among the other celebrities taking part in the series are Jonathan Ross, Alexa Chung, Michael Sheen and Sarah Brown, wife of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

The Great Comic Relief Bake Off is a new four-part series which begins on Wednesday and runs until Red Nose Day on March 13