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Rita Maria Stroud ( née Crudgington; born 8 March 1954), known professionally as Cheryl Baker, is an English singer and television presenter. She was a member of pop group Bucks Fizz, which won the 1981 Eurovision Song Contest and, following legal disputes, now performs under the name the Fizz. Bucks Fizz had 20 singles reach the UK top 60 between 1981 and 1988, including three number one hits with "Making Your Mind Up" (1981), "The Land of Make Believe" (1981) and "My Camera Never Lies" (1982).
Baker, who as a member of Co-Co had earlier represented the UK at the 1978 Eurovision Song Contest, left Bucks Fizz in 1993 to concentrate on her television career. In the mid-1980s, while still with the group, Baker started a career as a television presenter, including for the children's show How Dare You! (1984) and The Saturday Picture Show (1985–1986). In 1987, she joined Record Breakers and remained as a co-host until 1997. Her own show Eggs 'n' Baker, featuring cooking and guest musical performers, ran for five years from 1988. Her other appearances include Popstar to Operastar (2011), Celebrity Mastermind (2013 and 2022) and in the tenth series of Dancing on Ice (2017).
In 2004, Baker, Shelley Preston and fellow original Bucks Fizz member Mike Nolan started performing together as the Original Bucks Fizz. Another original Bucks Fizz member, Jay Aston, replaced Preston 2009. The group went through rebrandings, and in 2017, they renamed themselves as the Fizz and worked on new material. Baker has also appeared in several , and in a musical theatre production of Footloose.
The group continued to perform together and in 1978, they entered A Song for Europe again with "The Bad Old Days". This time they won and went on to perform for the UK in Paris. The song managed 11th place – the lowest placing by a UK entry up to that point. John Kennedy O'Connor, author of The Eurovision Song Contest – The Official History, described the group giving "a very weak and off-key vocal performance". Baker later reflected that she had been "totally disillusioned, that I'd let the country down. I can't honestly say I enjoyed anything about my first Eurovision experience even though it had been a childhood ambition." The song became a hit single, reaching 13 in the UK Singles Chart.
Baker was one of the few artists to take part in Eurovision to win at their second attempt. "Making Your Mind Up" became a number one hit in the UK, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and Norway. She has said that she does not like the song, as it is "not her kind of music at all".
Baker and the rest of the group had two more British number ones; "The Land of Make Believe" (1981) and "My Camera Never Lies" (1982). They had further successful singles, but after When We Were Young (1983), their next records sold less well. Baker and Aston appeared in cameo roles in the video for "Who's That Girl?" (1983) by Eurythmics.
According to journalist and author Simon Garfield, "petty jealousies over who sang lead vocals and designed outfits and routines" frequently occurred, and Baker would often clash with both Gee and Martin. He refers to the group as "not, after all, a band formed on trust and personal admiration half as much as it was a band formed by the goals of money and success" and therefore prone to infighting and jealousies. In all, Bucks Fizz had 20 singles reach the UK top 60 between 1981 and 1988.
On 11 December 1984, Baker was involved in a serious crash in Newcastle upon Tyne, while on tour with the group, when the tour bus crashed into a lorry. She was injured and rushed to hospital. Although she sustained three broken in her Vertebral column, she made a speedy recovery. Colleague Mike Nolan, however, suffered serious head injuries, prompting Baker to help establish the HeadFirst charity which supports crash victims, specifically those with head injuries. The group's popularity had been diminishing before the crash. The group then went through a series of personnel changes after an initial breakup in 1985, with ownership of the name Bucks Fizz being contested.
Baker left the group in 1993 to focus on developing her career in television. In an interview with Boyz in 2015, Baker said that, "When I left the group in the 90s, we were doing bingo halls and places like that and it was soul destroying because no one cared." Baker recalled interviewing participants in a Here and Now Tour when she was working for a magazine, and being inspired to reform the group. Around Christmas 2004, some of the band members, including Baker, reunited for live performances.
In 1985 and 1986, she co-hosted The Saturday Picture Show with Mark Curry In 1987, she joined Record Breakers as a co-host with Roy Castle, and continued as a presenter with new hosts after Castle's death in 1994. Baker eventually left the show in 1997, after 10 years. She also presented The Saturday Six O'Clock Show with Michael Aspel, and had guest appearances on the game shows Blankety Blank and Surprise, Surprise.
In 1988, Baker presented her own TV show Eggs 'n' Baker, featuring cooking and guest musical performers, which ran for five years. In 1989, a seven-part series, My Secret Desire, in which a panel attempted to identify the secret ambitions of guests, was hosted by Baker. She presented series of six short programmes about food safety, The Survival Guide to Food, in 1992.
After leaving Bucks Fizz, Baker took on other television work alongside Record Breakers. In 1987, The Stage described her as "ubiquitous... all over the small screen at the moment". She also participated in reality television shows including I'm Famous and Frightened! (2004). She broke her ankle during a landing on Drop the Celebrity (2003). Baker released the solo singles: "If Paradise Is Half as Nice" (1987) and "Sensuality" (1992), although neither of these found chart success.
In June 2011, she reached the final of the ITV series Popstar to Operastar, where she was beaten into second place by Joe McElderry. Baker appeared on Celebrity Mastermind in 2013 and 2022. In the latter appearance, she chose classic Disney Films as her specialist subject. Baker was confirmed as the second celebrity to take part in the tenth series of Dancing on Ice in October 2017. She was the fourth contestant to be eliminated.
Baker appeared in a special episode of the BBC One soap opera EastEnders to celebrate the Eurovision Song Contest 2023; the episode was broadcast on 11 May 2023, the night before the Eurovision semi-final.
Baker's Cheryl Baker's Low Calorie Cook Book (1996) reached number four in the UK book charts.
Baker, Nolan and Preston reunited as a group under the name the Original Bucks Fizz in 2004. Preston left the band in 2009 and was replaced by original member Aston. Following their loss in legal disputes with Gee over the rights to the name in 2011, they renamed the group. In 2012, they were known as OBF, and later as Cheryl, Mike and Jay – Formerly of Bucks Fizz. They later changed their name to the Fizz, and released the albums The F–Z of Pop (2017) and Smoke & Mirrors (2020) which both charted in the top 30.
In 2006, Baker took her first musical theatre role, as Vi Moore in Footloose, based on the 1984 motion picture of the same name, on tour and at the Novello Theatre. The same year, she fronted a series of television commercials for Safestyle windows; the company felt that she represented an "instantly recognised image of the 'girl next door'". During 2009, Baker toured with the musical Menopause.
On Record Breakers Baker set a world record for the longest rope slide, descending from Blackpool Tower, and was part of the world's largest Jazz ensemble and the longest Riverdance line. In 1987, Baker and Gyles Brandreth kissed onscreen for three minutes and 33 seconds, longer than the then-record longest onscreen kiss.
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