I’m going to level with you here: I’m not sure what I can tell you about the new series of The Great British Bake Off (Wednesday, 8pm, BBC1). Simply getting access to a preview tape of the opening episode involved an agonising series of requests and pleas and secret knocks and anonymous park bench meetings and blood oaths and Greco-Roman-style feats of strength and bravery.
Then, once I actually managed to acquire a copy, it came with a list of embargoes so bewilderingly comprehensive that I fear I’ll be kneecapped in the street by hired BBC goons for so much as telling you that The Great British Bake Off exists. It all seems incredibly heavy-handed for a show that’s predominantly about buns. But, here goes nothing. If you never hear from me again, tell my wife I love her.
I think I can tell you that they bake cakes in this week’s episode, and that there is a dildo gag within the first 20 seconds. I think I can tell you that, true to Bake Off form, upon hearing the word “gin”, Mary Berry turns into an eye-bulging Tex Avery cartoon who can’t stop wolf-whistling or banging metal dustbin lids against the side of her head.
I think I can also tell you that Sue Perkins’s vocal affectation when it comes to the word “bake” has now grown so pronounced that she sounds as if she’s vomiting 13 Jägerbombs into a police station wastepaper basket whenever she says it. Although I cannot reveal the nature of the technical challenge, I can reveal that – since this is Bake Off – they’re spending a full day making something that you could quite easily buy from a newsagent for a pound.
What I can tell you about are the new contestants, as the BBC has sent out its own triumphant press release on them. You’ll be pleased to know that all the stereotypes are present and correct. There’s a mumsy woman. There’s a tweedy churchy man. There’s an Alan Bennett character who says things like “I’m having one of them epiphanies.” There’s a useless-looking man-boy. There’s the contestant with no personality who’ll storm in at the last minute and come second. And then there’s comically laidback banker Selasi, who, if he carries on the way he does in episode one, might just singlehandedly redeem the entire finance industry.
God, I hate all this enforced secrecy. If you’ve seen one episode, you’ve seen every episode. The format is unchanged. It washes over you like it’s always washed over you: a cascade of nice people baking delicious things and a dramatic centrepoint where someone knocks a cake off a rack with their bum. If you liked it before, you’ll still like it. It’s exactly the same. Exactly.
What I can definitely tell you, though, is that if the rumours are true and this is the final year of Bake Off before it ups sticks for ITV, it would be a crying shame. This series cannot survive anywhere but the BBC. It’s as safe and gentle as Auntie itself, and shot through with a twitchy eccentricity that would be steamrollered to death elsewhere. This has been a rubbish year, packed to the hilt with misery and death. Bake Off is a minuscule bright spot that temporarily pushes all that aside. It’s comfort food. It’s a duvet fort. A duvet fort inexplicably protected by so much needless security that you’d think it was the nuclear football, but a duvet fort nonetheless.
