How the BBC’s Simpson left Bake Off kitchen looking like a war zone
PUT him in front of a camera in the middle of a war zone and BBC veteran John Simpson will remain as cool as a cucumber.
Put him in the Great British Bake Off tent and he crumbles – and leave the place looking like, well, a war zone.
The BBC World Affairs Editor has put in one of the show’s most disastrous performances, failing at everything from icing to cooking his recipes properly.
He even struggled to turn on his food processor and had difficulty with measurements saying he is ‘more pounds, shillings and pence’.
The 71-year-old competed against former pop stars Geri Horner, 43, and Louise Redknapp, 41, and ex-England midfielder Jermaine Jenas, 32, in the third instalment of The Great Sport Relief Bake Off, which is on BBC One tonight. His ill-fated offer- ings consisted of a ‘raw’ tart topped with his ten- year- old son Rafe’s favourite flavours, a beetroot and chocolate traybake which he iced when hot, causing the buttercream to split, and a ‘hideous’ Wimbledon-inspired biscuit showstopper.
Ahead of the final round, Paul Hol- lywood declared the journalist was just ‘playing for family pride’. Even the ever polite Mary Berry said he was ‘totally out of his comfort zone’.
Simpson agreed, admitting: ‘I’m not too bad at being parachuted into a place and finding out what’s happened and turning out a really good two minutes 45 on the news but possibly baking cakes is not my huge forte.’
Nevertheless he resorted to playing the age card to excuse his performance, saying he had been brought up when it was frowned upon for men to toil away in the kitchen.
He said: ‘My son does a cookery course and is getting moderately good. If I had said I wanted to go to cookery classes I would probably have been sectioned. My father would have been quite appalled.’
By the final round, Simpson had managed to redeem himself – a bit. Commenting on his biscuit showstopper, Hollywood said: ‘It looks hideous but it tastes beautiful,’ while Miss Berry declared: ‘It’s scrumptious.’