Can the new Bake Off line-up rise to the occasion?
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. JOE NERSSESSIAN speaks to The Great British Bake Off’s new-look line-up about the show’s prospects as it returns for s
IT 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 where filming has taken place for the past three series, the inside of the vast white tent looks the same. Rows of workstations, busy bakers, Paul lurking... what was all the fuss about?
But of course, look closer and there are differences. Noel Fielding – sporting an extraordinarily loud lime green jumper – bounces across the set, hopping from station to station in silver platforms. Sandi Toksvig strolls past wearing a wide smile.
She laughs with the bakers before filming a quick link. “Half an hour to put that welly in your jelly,” she bellows. One has to blink a couple of times before realising it isn’t one of the original presenting pair, Mel Giedroyc or Sue Perkins.
It’s the same show, same format, insists Paul, as the new line-up of talent, including co-judge Prue Leith – who has replaced Mary Berry – sit inside the house after filming.
Paul, 51, thought it would feel a 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
which also featured David Suchet as Salvador Dali.
“I was sitting there looking puzzled and David asked what’s wrong and I said ‘I’ve just been offered Bake Off’. He’s a method actor so I forgot he stayed in character and he said ‘what does your gut tell you?’.
“I went ‘It’s telling me to do it’ and he went ‘it is God’s barometer’.
“Two weeks later he went ‘you know I was Salvador Dali when I gave you that advice’.”
There can be no argument of a lack of camaraderie from this new-look line-up. Noel and Sandi have natural chemistry but whether the foursome can transmit that through the TV is a different matter.
“It’s a tricky situation because the original team had such good chemistry and it obviously worked,” says Noel as the newcomers reveal it will pain them if they are judged poorly by viewers.
“It’s a wonderful show and it’s much loved and you wouldn’t want to wreck that,” says Sandi, 59, while Prue adds: “If they say ‘not good enough’ then I’ll mind a lot.”
With 16 million viewers at the end of the last series, any changes to one of Britain’s most popular shows are going to be scrutinised.
To lose three-quarters of your line-up and shift from an ad-free format into the world of sponsorship was always going to be difficult. But in terms of talent, the new additions are certainly behind making the show work.
Noel says he keeps finding himself offering advice he didn’t think he knew, “that’s the wrong kind of gelatine”, while Sandi jokes they have “learned a whole new language”.
“We talk about crumb now, don’t we?” she adds, turning to Noel and saying: “I heard you say the word compote the other day. It’s insane.”
The pair also admit to worrying about the bakers. Noel quips – with no sense of irony – that they are the “magic ingredient”, adding: “They are always the stars of the show.
“We were quite surprised at how quickly we cared about them. On week one we were like ‘I love them’. They are like our children.”
“You fall in love with them, you absolutely do,” says Sandi. “We feel like we really know them, it hurts when someone leaves, it’s painful. The whole story is about them.”
Paul describes this year’s batch as the “best we’ve ever had” while Sandi adds: “What’s really lovely is how well they get on with each other. You become a big family.
“It sounds a bit soppy but you do. A large dysfunctional family ... well Noel’s the dysfunctional part.”
“I’m the dog,” he says to the familiar sound of laughter.
The new series of The Great British Bake Off begins on Tuesday at 8pm on Channel 4.