Bake Off rises to occasion
AS you could have guessed, the television is rarely switched off in my house. But there are just two occasions, one annual, one biennial, when I’m tempted to go for the off button.
Comic Relief and Children In Need raise large quantities of money and achieve more for the world’s disadvantaged than any TV critic ever did. I have no right to object to them but object I do, not because of what they do, but how they do it.
Excruciating “special” episodes of our favourite soaps and cringe- makingly well- intentioned celebrity challenges.
Rather than suffer as my TV schedule turns into a sort of hearty, tin- shaking Scouts’ gang show, I’d prefer it if they asked me outright for cash. They could even use threats. “Everyone pay us five quid or we’ll show back- to- back episodes of Question Time.” “A million in the next 10 minutes or we’ll give Patrick Kielty his own chat show again.”
I did not, as you might imagine, tune into THE GREAT COMIC RELIEF BAKE OFF ( BBC1) with much joy. More fool me, because it was quite fun. The contestants were a bunch unlikely to be browbeaten by the likes of Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood.
Dame Edna Everage took up the lunatic fringe position ( rather like Norman in the last series with his lavender Eiffel Tower) while Joanna Lumley iced everything with irony. Meanwhile, going at it in a reasonably straight- faced manner were Jennifer Saunders and Lulu.
In its natural state, of course, this show is dominated by people who are rather po- faced about baking. It wears the mask of an amateur competition but once you get to the quarter- finals everyone is on the brink of turning pro- pastry chef.
So it was refreshing to see four contestants who weren’t planning to launch their own cup- cake businesses. Instead, they had a bit of a laugh. Lulu made dog biscuits, or to be fair, biscuits in the shape of dogs and Dame Edna dared to speak the truth about macadamia nuts, calling them “edible wood”. Questioning Lulu about the problems with her last bake, presenter Sue Perkins asked, “Does it make you wanna shout?” ( even I got that one).
Best of all was Lumley’s finale piece. Intended to represent the Northern Lights, it was hastily downscaled to A Walk In A Wintry Park.
As Hollywood prepared to cut into it, she urged him to avoid the “pond”, otherwise the make- up mirror from her handbag. I laughed. Far more than I ever laughed at an episode of Ab Fab. What’s more, I even donated a fiver.
If Dickens was hanging around London today, he’d probably do his research in St John’s Medical Centre. All human life features in the fly- on- the- wall show GPs: BEHIND
CLOSED DOORS ( Channel 5), from the tragic to the hilarious.
In the busy Lewisham practice, we met a Mr Macanally, possibly the only person to return from a trip to Southeast Asia constipated. “His father died of the same thing,” said his wife, glumly, from the corner.
Patient of the week, though, was the young man who, on being told he’d need a hernia operation, pulled out his mobile and showed the doctor a picture of the procedure he wanted doing at the same time.
The picture, whatever it showed, made the doctor wince. “Why do you want that,” he asked warily. “I dunno,” replied the young man.
There’s clearly a lot of detective work involved at this end of the NHS. Not all of it worthwhile.