Thursday, August 28, 2014

It didn't take BBC1 long to ruin The Great British Bake Off



Do you blame Diana or Iain, asks a poll on the Shropshire Star website. For once my favourite paper has got it wrong. As Ruby Tandoh says, the people to blame are The Great British Bake Off's editors.

The move to BBC1 was always likely to prove a challenge to a programme based on niceness. That is one quality that bright young things on their way up in the world of television have no time for. There has to be edginess. Jeopardy. People have to go on a journey.

So it was that last night's episode was edited in such a way as to produce a wholly spurious controversy. The result is that Diana has withdrawn from the programme.

Nothing is real on television - Diana's withdrawal puzzles me because I thought the episodes were recorded well in advance - but the beauty of The Great British Bake Off was that it lulled us into forgetting that for an hour.

The editors have ruined exactly what it was that people liked about the programme. On what planet was making Iain bring that bin up to the judges' table an acceptable idea?

There is only one way to save the programme. The technical challenge in next week's programme should involve baking its stupid editors in a pie.

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