TV HIGHLIGHTS Can the new Bake Off line-up rise to the occasion? I

T WAS one of the biggest television controversies in recent years, decried and probed by politicians, slammed by the press and ditched by 75% of its on-screen talent.

The Great British Bake Off’s move to Channel 4 prompted a bitter public row between two of Britain’s publicly owned broadcasters.

The battle has continued ahead of the new series, with the BBC shifting its Bake Off replacement, The Big Family Cooking Showdown, from Tuesday to Thursdays in response to Channel 4’s “cynical” scheduling of the revamped show.

However, after the jokes about spending £75m on a glorified tent and attacks on Paul Hollywood – the only on-screen member of the Bake Off team to switch sides – subsided, Love Productions and Channel 4 have prepared a programme which feels remarkably familiar.

Arriving at the grand stately home It’s been a tumultuous year for Britain’s favourite cooking show with three-quarters of its talent leaving before the move to Channel 4. speaks to The Great British Bake Off’s new-look line-up about the show’s prospects as it returns for series nine where filming has taken place for the filming a quick link. “Half an hour to past three series, the inside of the put that welly in your jelly,” she vast white tent looks the same. Rows bellows. One has to blink a couple of of workstations, busy bakers, Paul times before realising it isn’t one of lurking... what was all the fuss about? the original presenting pair, Mel

But of course, look closer and there Giedroyc or Sue Perkins. are differences. Noel Fielding – It’s the same show, same format, sporting an extraordinarily loud lime insists Paul, as the new line-up of green jumper – bounces across the talent, including co-judge Prue Leith set, hopping from station to station in – who has replaced Mary Berry – sit silver platforms. Sandi Toksvig strolls inside the house after filming. past wearing a wide smile. Paul, 51, thought it would feel a She laughs with the bakers before little strange, arriving back without Mary or Mel and Sue.

“But then we turned up in the tent and do you know what it hasn’t even crossed my mind,” he says.

Six weeks or so into filming, the three newcomers look fairly relaxed.

Veteran cookery writer and chef Prue, 77, admits to immediately wanting the job after learning of Mary’s departure. Preparing for her second audition, she decided to impress producers by taking along a Gugelhupf, a rich Austrian dessert cross of bread and cake.

“By now my blood was really up and I really wanted the job,” Prue says. “I thought I’ll turn up with a perfect Gugelhupf and they’ll be so impressed that I have bothered to make one and it’s going to be the best Gugelhupf they’ve ever seen.

“So I made one and I turned it out and my husband came and had a look at it and went ‘That would never pass Paul Hollywood’.

“‘Why what’s the matter with it?,’ I replied and he said round the side there was a little nick.’

“So I never took it,” she says before Noel interrupts, “That was his lunch taken care of”, and the four fall about laughing.

A puzzled reaction greeted the left-field appointment of the Mighty Boosh man, a response which didn’t escape Noel, 44, after he was first called in to audition.

“I said ‘have you got the right number?’,” he laughs.

When he eventually got the call informing him he’d landed the job, Noel was dressed as Alice Cooper for a Sky Arts episode of Urban Myths