Bake the Bank
Why Mary Berry is worth every penny
At 4.30pm on Tuesday, Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins made the announcement that every fan of The Great British Bake Off was dreading. The show’s two presenters would not be “going with the dough” to Channel 4 – the commercial broadcaster that had just poached Bake Off from the BBC. For Bake Off’s 13 million weekly viewers, the series as they know and love it will now end – thanks to an audacious £75 million three-year deal by Jay Hunt, Channel 4’s chief creative officer.
“Jay’s made a terrible mistake,” said one TV industry insider. “She’s about to ruin Britain’s favourite TV programme by doing a Top Gear on it.”
The Twitter outcry at Mel and Sue’s departure was huge, instant and vitriolic. Richard Burr, a baker on the 2014 series of the show, pithily summed up many fans’ feelings: “Without Mel and Sue, it just isn’t Bake Off. Channel 4 has just bought a tent.”
And Channel 4 now needs to find presenters who are not just the right fit, but who are also prepared to face the kind of onslaught of scrutiny, criticism and abuse that greeted Chris Evans when he took over at Top Gear – a cautionary tale to any presenter who is asked to take on Auntie’s favourite show.
Hunt may not have factored in the viewers’ loyalty when she made her bid for Bake Off. The inside story of how the BBC lost its biggest show is about as far from the gentle, bucolic Bake Off tent as you could imagine. It’s a tale of greed, anger, revenge, politics, power and money – and one with its roots in conflicts and resentments that have simmered for years. At its heart, there are two off-screen characters for whom the TV industry feels more respect than it does affection: Channel 4’s Hunt, and Richard McKerrow, the driving force behind Love Productions, the independent company he co-founded with his wife Anna Beattie and which owns and produces the winning Bake Off format.
Hunt cut her teeth at BBC News, but when the news broke about Mel and Sue leaving
Bake Off, a BBC journalist texted me: “Nothing short of unbridled joy among BBC News staff, that their former colleague Jay Hunt has f–––ed something up quite so drastically.”
Hunt, of course, was very publicly dragged through an ageism and sexism tribunal after the dismissal of
Countryfile presenter Miriam O’Reilly on her watch as BBC One controller.
However, this deal could now easily come back to damage Hunt – as well as her Channel 4 boss, David Abraham, the broadcaster’s board, and even its prospects of staying in public hands.
“I’d like to understand from Channel 4 how they can justify spending £25 million (a year) on a show that’s already very successful somewhere else, when their statutory remit is to be different and innovative,” says Lord Michael Grade, a former chief executive of Channel 4.
McKerrow, meanwhile, has a financial relationship with a different broadcaster to consider. In 2014, he and his partners in Love Productions sold 70 per cent of their company to Rupert Murdoch’s Sky. Though the terms of the deal are confidential, it’s likely to contain an “earn-out” clause, keeping McKerrow in place for (probably) five years in return for a bonus if Love’s revenues reach their target – a goal that the Channel 4 deal will almost certainly help him achieve. “Earn-out culture turns good-hearted creative people into madmen,” says one independent TV producer.
Channel 4 may also have seemed like a refuge to McKerrow, after two serious run-ins with the BBC. As the old TV saying goes, where there’s a hit, there’s a writ. Having had such success with baking, the BBC then commissioned its in-house teams – rather than McKerrow’s company – to make barbershop format
Hair and amateur artist competition The Big Painting Challenge. The resulting atmosphere will not have helped the negotiations between Love and the BBC that preceded this week’s deal.
“I’m not surprised that the BBC lost the show – but I think it is shocking,” says Jon Thoday, co-founder of Avalon, the independent TV production and talent management company that represents David Baddiel, Fiona Bruce and Matt Forde. “It’s criminal for broadcasters not to take care of their hits.” For Thoday, that care also involves rewarding the people who are involved in making the show into a hit. “The true value of talent goes beyond money – because they deliver day in, day out, on and off screen.”
In other words: it’s all about the presenters. Just as Top Gear needed Jeremy Clarkson as well as cars to become a huge hit, so The Great
British Bake Off relies on Mel and Sue’s cheeky, innuendo-laden onscreen banter. “Their strength is that they are utterly respectful to the contestants, their relationship with Paul and Mary and the pitch-perfect tone which removes any sense of pomposity,” says Duncan Gray, an entertainment TV producer who was a senior commissioner at ITV and Sky.
Although the very big presenter deals make very big headlines – such as Ant and Dec’s reported £30 million renewal of their contract with ITV in recent weeks – they are few and far between. “The best presenters always embody the spirit of the channel – Ant and Dec just embody the spirit of ITV,” says Lorraine Heggessey, who commissioned Strictly Come Dancing as controller of BBC One and went on to run Talkback Thames, the producer of The X Factor.
Heggessey also points to Dermot O’Leary’s high-profile return to The X
Factor – alongside judging panel Simon Cowell, Louis Walsh, Sharon Osbourne and Nicole Scherzinger – as a good example of a happy match between presenter and show. “Dermot is cool and makes it look effortless,” she says. “But he’s confident enough to stand up to the judges when he wants to. He’s his own man, and you need somebody who can hold their own.”
ITV can justify O’Leary’s reported £8 million deal, but the BBC – as McKerrow and Love Productions have found – finds it difficult to write such enormous cheques. With nearly £4 billion a year of public funding, the BBC could certainly have found £25 million annually to keep Bake Off. But it has to take politicians’ views, as well as those of licence-fee payers, into account. In the week that the BBC’s new royal charter was also published – with stringent new rules requiring disclosure of talent pay over £150,000 – the judicious loss of Bake
Off may turn out to serve the corporation well in Whitehall.
And what of Bake Off itself and the on-screen talent? Well, Giedroyc will soon be co-presenting BBC One’s new
Take That talent show with Graham Norton. Sue Perkins is promoting her new book, and grieving over a death in her family – not the best time to be mulling a new job offer. Berry and Hollywood have gone to ground, and their decision over whether to move with Bake Off may dictate not only the future of the show, but possibly that of Channel 4 and its executives.
Channel 4, naturally, sees it differently. “By bringing The Great
British Bake Off to Channel 4 we are able to ensure that the show will remain free to air for audiences,” says a spokesman. “It epitomises many core Channel 4 values. We’re incredibly proud to be giving this much-loved show a safe home.”
But if C4 does need to hire new onscreen talent, the best candidates may now see Bake Off as a poisoned chalice. “I think if you’re a presenter with a very strong career that’s in the ascendancy, it would be a high-risk bet,” says Gray. “But I have to believe that the people around this extraordinary circumstance must have considered the fact that the talent weren’t secure. Somebody, somewhere must have a plan for that – to allow Channel 4 to refresh the show in its own image.”
So far, the favourites are Jo Brand (the presenter of Bake Off’s spin-off show, Extra Slice), Jennifer Saunders, Clare Balding and Davina McCall – but the bookies’ odds may not factor in those women’s loyalty to Mel and Sue.
‘Jay’s made a terrible mistake, she’s about to ruin Britain’s favourite programme’