A banker, a cricket-playing pastor and a former headteacher are among the aspiring bakers going whisk to whisk in the new Great British Bake Off.
But can any of the 12 contestants introduced on Monday for the seventh series, which begins on BBC1 on 24 August, compare with last year’s winner, Nadiya Hussain, whose ambitious millefeuilles and emphatic facial expressions made her the most popular contestant the show has ever seen?
More than 15 million people tuned in to see Hussain win the final of the sixth series in October, making the episode the most-watched British TV programme of 2015. The programme’s two chief judges, Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood, told the Radio Times this week that they “have achieved our aim to get Britain baking again” and there were no radical plans to change the show. “We have an excellent format, why muck it about?” Berry added.
They also provided some hints about what the dozen new contestants should avoid, with Berry, 81, pronouncing that “the macaron has had its day” and Hollywood warning against over-icing. “Anything that has more buttercream than it does cake is going to be a no-no for me. I’d ram it into someone’s face, honestly I would.”
Hollywood, 50, also blasted health fads and dietary advice. “These scientists pick something to hang their hat on,” he said. “One week, wine is OK to drink, the next week it isn’t. One week butter’s OK, then it’s margarine. You can’t have wholemeal, you can’t have gluten. People are educated enough to know the difference between what’s healthy and what isn’t. You can’t bludgeon them over the head with it.”
“Willpower is what it’s all about,” Berry added.
The new season of Bake Off may be the last on the BBC, with rivals thought to be hoping the corporation will not be able to agree terms with the producer, Love Productions, to keep the show. If the corporation does lose Bake Off it will mean a long wait for season eight, as its contract is understood to include a year’s cooling off period before it is aired elsewhere.
The BBC will be desperate to keep the programme. Neither ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent, which drew 12.7 million viewers in May, nor BBC1’s Strictly Come Dancing, with 11.7 million viewers, came close to drawing the viewing figures amassed by a homely show featuring people making cakes in a marquee.
Not including the Christmas specials, Bake Off episodes were seven of the top 10 most-watched UK programmes of 2015.
Hussain went on to cook a birthday cake for the Queen’s 90th birthday; she regularly appears on The One Show and is to star in a two-part travel cookery show, The Chronicles of Nadiya, charting her culinary voyage from her birthplace in Luton to her family’s ancestral village in rural Bangladesh. She has become something of a symbol of multicultural Britain, telling Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs on Sunday that despite racist abuse becoming part of her everyday life, “I love being British and I love living here”.
