Great British Bake Off

12 October 2015, 12:02 pm
Speciality Bites by Paul Hargreaves

I’ve got a confession to make. Up until the last 30 minutes of this year’s final I had never watched the Great British Bake Off

My excuse this year is that Wednesday Night is tennis night, and I hadn’t ever felt to need to Sky+ the series, despite the positive effect the programme has on sales of certain products like flour!

There is no doubt that this piece of television is a phenomenon. The final had nearly 14 Million viewers, figures only dreamed of by other channels and last achieved by most when there were only 4 terrestrial channels. However, the Great British Bake Off does polarise opinion. Chris Tarrant was on Five Live the following morning talking about his new initiative for strokes but was asked to comment on GBBO, and said, “The country has gone to the dogs with people rushing home from work to watch people baking cakes on TV!” Chris, how about the days when people used to rush home from work to watch people answer 15 trivial questions to try and will £1 Million! Jimmy Tarbuck was asked recently why we didn’t see him on television anymore. He said, “Because I can’t cook!”

Is the Bake Off really about baking though? Indeed are any reality programmes about the task in hand? To some degree of course they are, but I feel that in many ways they are not. This was particularly demonstrated this year by Nadiya. From what I gather it was maybe her personal journey that won her the competition rather than the cake itself. TV viewers and the public in general love to see a journey and a trier because they can relate that to their own lives, and possibly their own failures or even their own mediocrity or lack of determination. Ironic then that much of the British public seem to prefer to watch dramas like this on TV rather than challenge themselves.  Let’s hope some are inspired by Nadia’s journey to go on a journey themselves and do something they never thought they could achieve. That way we will build a better society and better culture. Far better, in my opinion, than 14 Million people slumped in front of the TV.

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