Why is Paul being so nasty?

Our TV critic despairs of him curdling Bake Off by trying to be Simon Cowell

FOR the Beeb’s delighted – if somewhat baffled – bosses, The Great British Bake Off is their miracle recipe. When it launched on BBC2 in 2010, the quirky, low-budget show was not expected to garner above a million viewers.

Today, it has grown into the biggest hit on television, trouncing glittering extravaganzas such as Strictly Come Dancing and knocking the ratings for spectacular costume dramas like Poldark into a tricorn hat.

The seventh series, now ruling the midweek schedules on BBC1, is attracting around 10million fans an episode.

Already in the executive suites of New Broadcasting House, they are daring to hope for audiences approaching 15million for the final – numbers barely seen since the Nineties.

Like the perfect Victoria sponge, there’s an elusive magic in the mix. But as countless disgruntled viewers, including me, became aware on Wednesday night, there is also a lump of gristle floating in the dough. And it’s putting us off our high tea. Judge Paul Hollywood has been coming across as arrogant, humourless and rude since the show returned.

He declared at the beginning that he wanted to see standards rise, and that he was no longer prepared to tolerate fumblings and careless mistakes.

But he’s taken this as an excuse to be downright foul. Anyone who seems to lack confidence has brought out a streak of bullying in Hollywood this year, as he homes in on their insecurities.

‘When you fail, you fail catastrophically,’ he told Tom, 26, at the start of this week’s episode. The poor chap looked like he wanted to run away, and he hadn’t even started to mix his dough yet. (Tom, by the way, went on to become Star Baker.) Pushing away shy Benjamina’s effort, Hollywood told her, ‘It’s like wallpaper paste!’

This runs counter to everything that makes Bake Off so well loved. It succeeds because it is a friendly, supportive show, where experts like the grandmotherly Mary Berry share their knowledge while presenters Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins muck about at the back of the class, giggling and throwing flour at each other.

THEsure way to ruin Bake Off would be to introduce a Simon Cowell element, a splatter of pantomime villainry. Bake Off is sweet-toothed escapism, as light as a profiterole. The last thing it needs is a Mr Nasty. Hollywood’s new approach came to the fore on Wednesday because this was the bread round, and he apparently thinks there is no one alive who has anything to teach him about loaves.

He was even a little crusty with Mary. At almost every counter he was the first to speak, and only when he had worked through his repertoire of smirks and sneers was she permitted to get a word in. It was the same at the judging.

There are plenty of viewers, perhaps, who will forgive him anything, because of his icy blue eyes and clipped goatee. If you like the working-class cowboy look, Paul Hollywood is a Scouse version of Robert Redford. But for the rest of us, immune to that rough charm, he’s wrecking the recipe.

For me, it’s reaching the point where I’m not sure I want to watch, because I don’t want that man strutting in my living room for an hour.

His self-satisfied smile grates on people for other reasons too. Plenty of suppliers and workers were left out of pocket when two of his businesses went into receivership.

One bakery, Bradleys of Ashford in Kent, was forced to write off a £2,400 debt when Hollywood Bread called in the liquidators in 2003.

Graham Linkins, managing director of Bradleys, never forgot his loss. One day, he remembered, ‘I walked into my front room and saw him on the TV, and said, “That b*****d owes me money.”’

Others have similar reasons to be unhappy. Hollywood Bread’s former head baker Steve Foster was owed £800 in wages. Shop manager Gordon Kolb was left short to the tune of £1,100. And those cases were just the tip of the iceberg. Hollywood Bread’s total debts, when it was dissolved in December 2005, came to £262,000.

It was a similar story in 2014, when Paul Hollywood Artisan Bread – which supplied loaves, including sourdough that sold at £15 each, to Harrods – went into liquidation, owing £60,000 to creditors including a leasing company, energy firm eDF and the taxman.

even though Hollywood’s BBC salary is believed to be £500,000 a year, liquidators have not been able to repay the company’s debts.

It’s understandable that when Hollywood boasts in interviews of spending £135,000 on an Aston Martin, or indulges in his playboy hobby of motor racing, there are some who feel aggrieved.

You might suppose, on that evidence, that Hollywood is a man who cannot learn from past mistakes. Not so, as his manner towards women in the Bake Off tent bears out. He used to be a flirt. Bake

Off has a tradition of inno- cent smut and innuendos (which Mel and Sue would be the first to admit they occasionally take too far).

Hollywood’s take on that was smarmier – he’d treat the younger female contestants to his winning smile with a twinkle that sometimes came across as creepy.

Some contestants could brush it off good- humouredly. Others, including university student Ruby Tandoh from the 2013 series, seemed to recoil visibly.

All that flirting ceased after Hollywood’s attempt to crack America with their version of Bake Off – the doomed American Baking Competition – flopped in a spectacular fashion. He became embroiled in a disastrous relationship with his fellow (and much younger) judge Marcela Valladolid.

AVERY public separation from his wife Alexandra ensued and Hollywood found himself living for a time in a converted potting shed. When Alex, with whom he has a son, took him back he was a reformed man.

The female bakers can bat their eyelashes all they like, as one or two have been trying to do this year: Hollywood is now as crusty as a week-old roll. He won’t be making that mistake again.

Whether the BBC producers will blunder is more open to doubt. There’s a risk that, as Bake Off becomes ever more popular, they’ll mess with the formula.

We’ve seen it happen before, with The Apprentice, a show that has become a bloated mess, a victim of its own success.

Perhaps the worst that could happen to Bake Off is a national tour, flogging its way round the B-list celeb circuit, as Strictly has done. When that starts, we’ll know the bottom has gone well and truly soggy.

Already, a suspicion is creeping in that the judging has been manipulated to ensure the more entertaining and eccentric bakers stay in.

Wednesday’s show saw 20-year-old student Michael eliminated, though he didn’t appear to have disgraced himself. By contrast, Sikh baker Rav, who had a disastrous technical round, and aerobics enthusiast Val, who has been in the running for dismissal every week, both got a reprieve. Neither seems to have a hope of winning overall, so is Bake Off really playing fair?

But, most importantly, the producers – and Mary Berry too – need to drag Hollywood into line. He isn’t God’s gift to women or to baking, no matter what he might think. His best asset is his Liverpool scally charm that, if left unchecked, can easily become obnoxious.

Three years ago, with his marriage on the rocks, Hollywood announced his intention to step back from public life and open a village bakery. He would live above the shop, bake whatever he liked, and close early when the lawn needed mowing.

Maybe, for the good of Bake Off, it’s time that dream came true.