Great British Bake Off judge Prue Leith has said she felt “suicidal” after she accidentally revealed the name of this year’s winner ahead of the final.

The TV star, who congratulated winner Sophie Faldo on Twitter six hours ahead of the final, said it was “the most idiotic thing in the world”.

She told ITV’s This Morning: “I think that was one of the worst half an hours, that first half an hour when I realised what I had done.

She added: “I was in Bhutan and had not had any reception for a while so when I turned on my phone and there was reception there was a mass of tweets and one of them said ‘don’t forget to congratulate the winner after 10.30’ and I thought ‘oh my God, it is past 10.30’ so I just quickly tweeted what I did.

“Then as soon as it went I thought ‘oh my God’ and I went into a panic mode where I couldn’t work my phone and I didn’t know how to delete it quickly and I couldn’t think and in the end I just rang my trusty PA and she said ‘I’ve already deleted it’ and it was 89 seconds after I had done it and that was too late, it had been retweeted.”

Asked how she felt, she replied: “Suicidal, I mean awful. The thing that upset me most was I thought this will take attention off the winner, and Sophie had worked for months and months for this moment and the column inches are going to be about my tweet not about her triumph.”