TBiTC #2: MasterBake

Mel & Sue are BACK!

The Great British Bake Off BBC2, Tuesday 8pm

You can’t beat a good cake! But you can, it turns out, over-beat cake mixture – maybe that’s where I’ve been going wrong.

Anyway, everyone’s favourite food-loving lesbian has reunited with that less funny woman to host The Great British Bake Off, which started last night and continues, somehow, for another 5 weeks.

Last night it was cakes, next week they’ll be baking biscuits. By episode six, perhaps they’ll be baking potatoes, it’s not altogether clear. As befits such a show, ten contestants became eight last night. Sadly, the two rejects included a delightfully bonkers woman who thought best to present her chocolate concoction with a giant pineapple shard stabbed into it – the world is crying out for more of these borderline-psychotic cakes.

There was a bit of baking history too – something about Queen Victoria inventing the wedding cake, and about how Sir Francis Drake was the first man to circumnavigate the globe eating only chocolate sponge. I might have made that last bit up.

The judges (for what is a talent show without judges?), Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood (left), carefully negotiated the balanced approach between condescending know-it-alls and fawning sycophants. Mary, who you imagine might just go off on one at some point in the series if one of the contestants accidentally misuses self raising flour, is as delightful as they come but clearly knows her stuff – her baking expertise is hyped to the point that I’m pretty sure she invented every cake recipe in the history of time. Ever. Hollywood, described on the Great British Bake Off website as a master baker (tee hee), was authoritative but fair, and wasn’t affraid to heap on the praise when it was due: “you could serve that to the Queen,” he purred, when one budding Mr Kipling served up a baked corgi particularly fine effort.

Right, I’m off to find some baked goods – all this talk of cakes is making me hungry.

You can catch the first episode of The Great British Bake Off here.

TBiTC will return arbitrarily.