Already causing a stir, Bake Off ’s sauciest new star
With references to baps, buns and soggy bottoms, frequent lapses into mild innuendo are usually about as risqué as the Great British Bake Off gets.
But the show looks set to be sexed-up this year – by the glamour that aspiring baker Candice Brown will bring to the tent.
in contrast to the homely image she created when saying she likes to bake in her pyjamas, the 31-yearold’s accounts on social media show her flashing her legs in fishnet stockings. the London-born PE teacher, who lives in Bedfordshire with her boyfriend, appears to have worn the 1920s-style outfit to a screening at the Secret Cinema in 2014.
Later that year she revealed an ambition to become a model, posting a photo of herself pouting with a message calling for Marc Jacobs to cast her as one of his models.
She was not successful but her looks have not gone unnoticed, as last year she was used as a hair model by a regional L’Oreal team for a hairdressing competition.
Since the promotional photo of Miss Brown for the BBC show was posted online yesterday, some fans have admitted to having a ‘crush’ on her while others said that she was already their favourite contestant.
in an interview before the show, Miss Brown revealed that she has a passion for vintage clothes, and said that she switches between baking in high heels and pyjamas.
Meanwhile promotional photos for Bake Off have sparked a sexism row. the show’s producers got each amateur baker to pose with a mixing bowl full of icing – pink for female contestants and blue for the males.
Eagle-eyed followers of the show, including Liberal Democrat leader tim Farron, were quick to criticise the gender stereotypes.
Farron wrote: ‘Looking forward to catching #GBBO but i hope the pink icing for girls, blue icing for boys is dropped.’
Others said that the move was ‘backward’ and ‘embarrassingly dated’. One commented: ‘if there’s any show that just blithely ignores gender stereotypes it’s Bake Off, so why the different icing?’
Following the outcry, the official BBC1 twitter account tweeted a new picture showing the bakers using multi-coloured icing.