Bake Off is no place for hissy fits and tantrums

The TV show has always been about old-fashioned amateurism, not sharp elbows and perfectionists

The thing I’ve always relished about The Great British Bake Off is that the stakes are refreshingly low. It’s not a gladiatorial contest, so much as light refreshment hour at the Girl Guides’ annual jamboree. The show is all about modest rewards and the mild-mannered amateur, Chariots

of Fire run as the village fête snail race. Nobody wheels out their dying nan in an oxygen tent to garner sympathy points, or claims they’ll give 110 per cent of their energy to the task – because if you can weigh 200g of flour correctly, your grasp on accuracy is good enough to know that’s all

dragées and edible balls. We expect participants to care, but not so deeply that they’ll have a full-body meltdown. Life and death is what’s happening in Aleppo, not a lemon drizzle that’s a little too dry. Which is why the nation was politely appalled when bearded baker Iain Watters binned his collapsed baked Alaska two years ago and stormed from the tent to almost immediate disqualification. Getting things out of proportion is Bake Off’s biggest sin.

So I was (mildly) disappointed this week when the series returned to find one contestant sobbing at “runny” icing and another lobbing her imperfect sponge across the tent, encouraged in her hissy fit by Paul Hollywood. It seemed only a matter of time before Sue gave Mel a Glaswegian kiss and Mary Berry drew out a Bugsy Malone splurge gun and sprayed everyone with whipped cream. Really, if I wanted histrionic tears and tantrums with my cream tea, I’d watch the Labour Party leadership hustings.

Let’s hope this display of excessive emotion was just beginners’ nerves settling down. After a high-octane fortnight watching the world’s finest athletes reach the limits of physical endurance, you long for something with rather less jeopardy. The kind of prime-time TV that means you can pop out to make a cuppa, without cursing your bad timing forever.

If the Olympics teaches children the value of persistence, practice and reaching for the stars, I rely on

Bake Off for lessons in astonished, grateful winning and gracious, unconcerned losing. And, in fairness, church minister Lee Banfield, the first participant sent home, was as amiable in defeat as he had been all the way through. I loved the fact that his Genoese sponge lacked any attempt at decoration or ingenuity, as if he didn’t quite know he was in a competition, but was knocking something up as a treat for the evensong choir. It was no surprise to learn that his wife had entered him for the show; this sweettempered man was less dog-eat-dog, than cat-lick-kitten.

Bake Off at its best is a return to an enchanted childhood where the season is forever spring, the hour is teatime and the competition is no more ruthless than the school fundraiser’s tombola.

It takes me back to the days of my hamlet’s annual garden show, when the height of all my peers’ childhood ambition was to win “Best Miniature Garden”. This pleasure, unknown to my Pokémon-hunting offspring, was the laborious construction of a bonsai terrace in an old baking tray. I used moss for lawn, gravel as crazy paving and the foil from a Mr Kipling apple tart as a make-do pond. There were many pursed lips the year a neighbour’s father made a tiny fountain with a pump for her fairy bower and it took first prize – it simply wasn’t in the spirit of things at all.

Little did we know then that within a generation America’s win-at-allcosts culture would have infected us and mums who had sharpened their elbows scaling the north face of the corporate Eiger would work til dawn on Philip Treacy-grade Easter bonnets, which would then be presented to the class as the work of their six-year-old.

Back in those innocent times, a careless disregard for perfection was often rewarded. My mother once won first prize at the garden show for a Victoria sponge that had caved in at the centre after a hungry child opened the Aga door mid-bake. She simply filled the hole with jam and called it a Victoria Doughnut Surprise.

As a haphazard triumph, it came second only to the birthday cake she marbled with green and blue food colouring. When she tried to hand it out at the end of a party child after child chorused: “Mrs Pelling, I can’t eat this. It’s mouldy.” So Mum stood in the centre of the kitchen, wolfing down great handfuls in theatrical fashion, to show that a Stilton-look sponge wouldn’t kill you.

Make do and mend is the proper British response to patisserie imperfection – not hurling your concoction at the nearest window. At a time when teachers report pupils’ quest for perfection and fear of failure hinders progress (particularly for girls), we need to embrace small disasters and blissful fallibility: hurrah for Bake Off’s Selasi, who forgot a crucial ingredient and simply laughed at his own slip.

We may burst with pride at Jason Kenny’s six Olympic golds, but it’s good to remember that Eddie the Eagle caused the nation almost as much delight. In the same spirit, I hope an outsider wins this year’s Bake Off with a wonky but delicious chocolate gateau, not some smarty-pants infusing their sponge with Japanese Matcha tea.