I came away 60£ lighter and with a pharmacy of medications under my arm.
With the Olympics now finished, there is a new competition that has sparked the old imagination and interest and that is the quintessentially British pastime of competitive cake making!
The first episode of The Great British Bake Off (BBC Tuesday Nights) made for a fascinating watch. 12 amateur bakers from all over the UK produce their own very individual set of buns and cakes against the clock and in competition with each other. Silver Fox Judge Paul Hollywood and Virginia McKenna look-a-like cook Mary Berry are on hand to assess the confectionery while the pithy presenters Mel Giedroyc & Sue Perkins eek up the pressure by popping back and forth in the marquee when oven disasters rear their ugly head!Of course the whole thing is contrived as hell. The bakers are not just housewives from the local WI they are "serious" cooks "with a passion " for baking and each has their own back story which is set up to endear them to the general public.... we have an Asian student, and Black midwife, a ginger computer looking geek, some sexy looking young men and pleasing looking women, a vicar's wife and even the obligatory elderly Professor type who plays the cello......I was half expecting to see an Albanian lesbian in a wheelchair cooking away in the back but I think that the producers bottled it.....
Judges Hollywood and the delightful Mary Berry |
Everything is presented in a Kath Kidston way......of butter icing, doilies and "more tea Vicar?"
An Ideal panacea to Olympic withdrawals and a resurgence of the bloody recession