Mary is our last bulwark against the savagery of a dunked biscuit
THE Great British Bake Off (BBC1) has opened up a proper class divide — and efforts to sling a bridge across have only made it worse. Last week, Paul Hollywood dunked a Jaffa cake in his tea mug and was scolded by Mary Berry: ‘We don’t do that in the South,’ she admonished him.
Like other social disasters, such as dropping jam on your mother-inlaw’s carpet or hiccuping in church, there was nothing to be done but blush — and never ever mention it again.
Bake Off tried instead to brazen it out, with a whole segment on dunking. Sue Perkins took tea at a ‘swanky hotel’, where they had tablecloths and everything, to learn about the history of the dunk.
She dipped ancient Greek rock cakes in soup and imperial Roman biscotti in sweet wine, before declaring: ‘Dunking is one of the many pure joys of being a Brit.’
But her elegant surroundings couldn’t hide the truth. Dunking is common. When you dunk your Digestive, you’re no better than you ought to be. That’s what makes it such a forbidden pleasure. There wouldn’t be much fun in a soggy biscuit if it weren’t illicit.
I remember my grandpa dunking a custard cream in his teacup, the best china, too, just to see the scandalised expression on my nan’s face. It was wrong in the Sixties, and it’s wrong now.
Sue and Paul are mistaken to pretend that these things no long matter. They and Mary are Britain’s last bulwark against immorality and social collapse. If decent people dunk openly, we might as well all be savages.
Because of a bereavement, Sue was missing from the tent for the rest of the show. We’ve never seen her partner Mel Giedroyc present Bake Off without her before, and a slightly saucy aspect of their double act was revealed: you might think it’s Sue who loves the rude jokes, but, left unchaperoned, flirty Mel was being racier than ever.
As Sikh baker Rav Bansal wrestled with a sack of cold icing, Mel sidled up and whispered: ‘Do you want a pair of warm hands on your bag? Why is it so stiff?’ Poor Rav went so red, his turban started to glow.
And when talk turned to cubs and scouts, Mel turned to judge Paul Hollywood and said: ‘Were you a Brownie? Were you ever a Beaver?’ The question was not innocently meant.
Her innuendos were infectious. PE teacher Candice Brown called out to Mel: ‘Can you come and grab my jugs, please?’ Madam, really! This was the second week of the contest and it flew by. The first edition of each year’s Bake Off is always slightly daunting as we struggle to work out who’s who, and spot their strengths and weaknesses. But now their faces are more familiar, we can settle to the business of drooling over the cakes and deciding whose showstopper we’d eat first.
Bank-worker Selasi Gbormittah seems to be an early front-runner, with his laid-back charm and penchant for spices. He was ambling round the tent with his hands in his pockets while his rivals were running and clutching their hair.
But this could be trickery in the editing suite. To guess the eventual winner of this year’s contest, we’d do better to watch for the quiet ones, the bakers who are taking up less screen time.
Stephen Tompkinson, as the hangdog detective in DCI Banks (ITV), is a quiet one. The villains on his manor don’t seem to see it that way, though.
Shaun Dooley, playing a corrupt property developer, called him ‘a great lump of anger’. That makes no sense — Banks is more like a sedated Basset hound than an erupting volcano.
He’s a hound in other ways, too. Though he’s embroiled in another office romance, he still yearns after his Detective Sergeant, Annie (Andrea Lowe). ‘We’re adults, we’ve moved on,’ he told her as he invited her to dinner with his new girlfriend, but you can see him planning his move — a grope, a snog and a morose apology.
Nothing’s changed since the last series then. This show never does move on.