Bake Off will just crumble without Mary MAIL COLUMNIST’S TAKE ON TV CAKE WAR
James: No show without ‘favourite granny’
He can’t believe Channel 4 paid £ 75million for a format that didn’t include the biggest star – but he’s “not surprised” her sidekick Paul Hollywood chose to follow the money.
Our Seven Days columnist James, 25, who reached the Great British Bake Off finals in 2012, said: “Without Mel, Sue or Mary, there’s very little left.
“Mary makes the show. She’s actually lovelier in real-life than she seems on television. She’s like your favourite granny, she knows everything about baking and she’s very British. “I really do wish her well in whatever she’s going to do now. If the BBC are going to make another baking show, she’d be brilliant.
“But I think this might just be a convenient opportunity for her to step back a bit. She’s 81 now so she deserves it.”
The furore over the BBC’s loss of their hit show reached boiling point last week with the revelation that Mary was to leave the programme while Paul would stick with it.
He’s said to have been given a three- year deal that is wor th £4.5million to move to Channel 4, three times his reported BBC salary of £500,000.
And James, who’s from Shetland, believes the show will still continue to have some success... in the short term.
He said: “There’s been a lot of fuss about advertisements during the show but I wouldn’t be worried about that.
“They would just replace the little skits that Mel and Sue do.
“I’d be more worried about product placement, with brands being pushed on to the viewers. And I would be concerned that the demographic of the show would change.
“The BBC goes to some lengths to make sure there’s a mix of different types of contestants from diverse backgrounds. I suspect the BBC Bake Off shows will become classics and the Channel 4 ones wil l f izzle out after a while, then disappear altogether before returning in a completely different way, like Come Dancing or Masterchef did.”
The Beeb are already rumoured to be planning a replacement for Bake Off, starring Mary, Mel and Sue with one new presenter.
Former Saturday Kitchen host, James Martin, is the hot contender, but our own James wouldn’t rule himself out of the running, despite being a newly-qualified doctor based at Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital.
He said: “Paul is following the dough, that’s fair enough. It doesn’t really surprise me.
“But Bake Off made Paul Hollywood, Paul Hollywood didn’t make the Bake Off.
“There has been talk that maybe Nadiya Hussain could take over from Mary but I think it would need someone more senior, someone like Nigella or Delia.
“I’m happy for my name to be considered, though, if anyone’s looking for a fresh face. “It’s probably better paid than a junior doctor position, and with shorter hours.”