Ruth wins Bake Off
IT’S Ruth! In an apron! Whipping up meringues! And quite frankly she’s so good at it she’ll be lucky if the Holyrood canteen doesn’t snap her up for a few shifts.
This was the third episode of Channel 4’s Great Celebrity Bake Off for Stand Up To Cancer – five very special charity episodes of everyone’s favourite TV show set inside a tent.
So far it has featured a range of ‘I wonder what happened to them’ celebrities, including the likes of Harry Hill and Stacey Solomon.
Quite what Ruth Davidson, an actual politician with an actual job, was doing there wasn’t explained. You’d never have got Annabel Goldie on a reality show.
Then again, Baroness Goldie never managed to win 31 seats at Holyrood, so perhaps the Scottish Tory party leader knows what she’s doing.
While there was a bit of fluff near the beginning about being persuaded to do the show because it was for a very good cause (undoubtedly true), you get the sense that Ruth has always been slightly seduced by the smell of the greasepaint. Or in this case, the buttercream.
In any case, here she was in the Bake Off tent in a standard issue, true Tory blue shirt and black trousers. In opposition was Jamie Laing, a nice but dim Made in Chelsea cast member whose greatgreat-grandfather invented the digestive biscuit, Australian comedian Tim Minchin, and singersongwriter Ella Eyre (nope, me neither). Was this really the best Channel 4 could do? Some of this lot are barely household names in their own households.
DESPITE the whiff of pre-mayoral, publicityhungry Boris Johnson, this sort of stuff is Ruth’s forte: roll up your sleeves, get the job done and deliver a few withering put downs along the way.
‘It’s like a tractor beam,’ she informed Paul Hollywood of his famous blue steel gaze, returning an equally penetrating glare while she set about mixing a chocolate orange loaf cake.
‘Yeah it’s like being in a trance,’ added eternally vacant host Noel Fielding. ‘When I go home I have no idea what’s happened all day.’
‘Is that unusual for you though?’ Ruth bit back. ‘Because I’ve got a feeling that might have followed you around your whole career.’
Tee hee. Poor Noel. Now he knows how Nicola Sturgeon feels every Thursday after First Minister’s Questions. Prue Leith, Bake Off’s chief diva without portfolio, was particularly impressed with Ruth’s organisational skills.
When the Tory leader dropped a baking sheet of meringues on the floor of the oven (I’m convinced a very un-Tory swear word was edited out) she simply deadpanned, ‘I’ve had an incident’, and calmly cleaned it up.
‘It’s a little bit like politics,’ she said. ‘If you make a mess you do have to clean it up pretty quickly.’ Words for the Prime Minister’s shell-like, perhaps?
Mess or no mess, Ruth was streets ahead in the signature challenge, producing a chocolate orange marble cake which – despite emerging from the oven looking like something that might once have been found atop Mount Vesuvius – earned her not only high Hollywood praise, but a Hollywood handshake.
All those years of rock-hard scones at church hall Tory party fundraisers must have paid off.
The three other contestants looked alarmed at her proficiency, particularly when she won the technical challenge of tiramisu sandwich biscuits (a biscuit never heard of before nor since) with an expert bit of piping and a nearperfect buttercream icing.
‘I’m not a baker,’ she shrugged modestly to the camera. ‘And I think if I can do it, anyone can do it.’ A statement somewhat belied by Tim Minchin’s offering, which involved raw biscuit batter and was presented on a baking tray.
FOR her showstopper, Ruth made a meringue tower for her partner Jen’s upcoming birthday. Because Jen is from County Wexford, which is famous for its strawberries, it was, Ruth explained, ‘strawberrytastic’, involving two strawberry daiquiris and meringues in the colours of the Irish flag. She called it Ruth’s Wexford Wonder.
How many daiquiris had she imbibed when she came up with that? No offence, Ruth, but I hope you got her a bit of jewellery, too.
Prue and Paul were impressed though, despite the Tory leader having got a bit over-excited with the food colouring. Paul declared: ‘It’s bold, it tastes amazing.’
Lawks a lawdy, after all that she won! Having been crowned star baker she earned hugs, applause and a special apron that I suspect at least three of her MSPs have bet her to wear at tomorrow’s First Minister’s Questions.
It turns out the Tory leader’s not only a natural on the telly, she’s a dab hand at a loaf cake. Just as long as she remembers the day job – and doesn’t sign up for Strictly.