Sharpen the palette knives! Bake Off will be a bunfight to the death
Now the knives are coming out. Also the hinged pie tins and the fluted jelly moulds, because The Great British Bake Off (BBC1) was tackling Victorian recipes and camaraderie was turning to brutal competition.
This always happens: with half the contestants gone, every one of the survivors is starting to believe he or she can win the series. Bake off ceases to be genial and becomes gladiatorial. The next few weeks promise to be unmissable.
Prison governor Paul and mother-of-three Nadiya were indulging in the most blatant gamesmanship. First, the two of them crowded round 19-year-old Flora, pulling horrified faces as she willed her game pie to cook through before the deadline.
Poor Flora was so racked with nerves that she seemed ready to throw up at the end of every challenge. when she announced she was going to turn her oven up, to make certain the rabbit-and-pigeon filling was hot right through, Paul looked aghast and urged her to think again.
Free advice is generally worth precisely what you pay for it, and Flora wisely ignored him. They clashed again during the technical challenge, but this time the teenager seemed to have the measure of him — dismissing his comments with a sardonic smile.
It’s these minuscule battles that make Bake off such a pleasure in its later stages. Great drama doesn’t have to involve mortal combat and towering stakes: an argument about whether to put your royal icing in the freezer can be just as tense.
Photographer and stay-at-home father Ian, whose sheer competence occasionally curdles into smugness, has been rubbing some of his fellow bakers up the wrong way.
They watched eagerly as he struggled to complete his showstopper, a crown of jelly and sponge. when he finished it with a second to spare, the tent broke into applause, some of it decidedly reluctant.
Nadiya clapped with her arms folded, slapping one hand against her bicep. Try it — you’ll be surprised how much resentment can be pent up in one gesture.
It was fireman Mat who suffered, though, when he appealed to Paul for help shifting his own showstopper onto a stand. Somehow, as Paul twisted the delicate construction, its sponge wall split and jelly leaked out. Goodness knows how it happened.
with so much deadly detail for fans to enjoy in the baking tent, the judges and presenters weren’t much needed. Paul Hollywood’s swingeing criticisms were toned down, and Mel and Sue ditched the double entendres. Sue did try out an impression of Queen Victoria, though she made her sound like Princess Margaret, clipped and slightly sozzled at the same time. According to contemporaries, Victoria had a German accent . . . a detail too far, even for Bake off.
Historical snippets abounded in The Sound Of ITV: The Nation’s
Favourite Theme Tunes ( ITV), part of the broadcaster’s 60th birthday celebrations.
we learned that Yorkshireman Ronnie Hunt earned six quid for playing the trumpet solo on Lancashire Blues, better known as the Corrie theme, and that Tony Hatch’s Emmerdale music was meant to convey the loneliness of the Yorkshire Dales.
The show was stuffed with the kind of trivia that will win you pub quizzes: Gerard Kenny, who wrote the Minder song, I Could Be So Good For You, also wrote Frank Sinatra’s New York, New York. It’s hard to imagine Dennis waterman joining the Rat Pack in Vegas, though. And imagine if ol’ Blue Eyes and the Mob had been looking after Arfur Daley.
‘Er Indoors wouldn’t have liked waking up with a horse’s head.
The trouble with compilations is that they leave viewers itching to watch the original shows. Play us ten seconds of the music from The Sweeney or the title sounds of The Avengers, and we’re left feeling teased and frustrated.
Mind you, it’s often worse for the composers themselves. The chap who wrote the reedy theme to Agatha Christie’s Poirot confessed that the tune often gets stuck in his head, distracting him when he’s at the piano.
Now I’ve got it running round my little grey cells, too.