The Chronicle

Who’ll take top billing?

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T’S Festival Week in the Bake Off tent. Nope, that doesn’t mean they’ll be making brownies with a ‘special ingredient’ to flog at Glastonbur­y, or whipping up hog roast baguettes to serve to hungover rockers in a field.

Rather it’s an homage to all things festival-related and celebrator­y in nature.

The signature sees the bakers go internatio­nal for their inspiratio­ns, then it’s a deep-fried Italian treat for the technical.

And the showstoppe­r is their interpreta­tion of an Indonesian

carnival cake–a vibrantly coloured( apart from in Henry’ s case) feat of planning and architectu­re.

To help inspire the bakers, Noel’s drawing on his memories (or lack of, more likely) of all the festivals he’s ligged at, while Sandi’s sporting some showgirl feathers and Prue’s bringing the carnival colours. Although, to be fair, that’s how she always dresses, so she might not even have known there was a theme.

We’re not quite sure why they’ve felt the need to introduce a load of strange gimmicky themed weeks – ditto setting obscure technical challenges for food nobody’s ever heard of and that we don’t even want to eat.

Obviously telly people are told they’ve got to keep things fresh, up the stakes, not get stale (sorry!).

But someone should tell them we viewers really wouldn’t mind in the slightest watching the contestant­s make the same bakes that’ve been done in previous series. Scones, pork pies, éclairs, Battenberg­s, illusion cakes – that’s what we’re talking about. Not curd cheese, veggie burgers and Indian milk sweets.

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 ??  ?? Ever the glamorous one, Sandi Toksvig brings her unique style to Festival Week – although Henry is looking a touch worried
Ever the glamorous one, Sandi Toksvig brings her unique style to Festival Week – although Henry is looking a touch worried
 ??  ?? Noel is off down memory lane
Noel is off down memory lane

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