Spectacles

by Sue Perkins

  Next it’s time for what we have named the Royal Tour, in which either Mel or myself potters around the benches finding out what large-scale adventures in baking the contestants will be attempting. We are joined on this pilgrimage by the show’s iconic judging duo, Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry. Their love affair is one of the worst-kept secrets in show business. Paul’s job is to listen to the baker’s description of the pie/cake/tart in question, leave an ominous pause and then say, ‘Mmm. I’ll be interested to see if that works,’ before walking off, shaking his head. No matter how hard he shakes his head, not a single hair will move. Mary, on the other hand, says very little but sets her eyes to ‘Stun’.

  My job is to steal and eat as much food as I can. And I can eat a lot. My motto: ‘If it’s at head height or lower I will eat it.’ Above head height, I won’t touch it. I won’t climb for food. I’m not desperate.

  For the next four hours I systematically wander round the bakers’ work stations, robbing them of ingredients and making them cry because they no longer have enough chocolate to complete their big brown Schichttorte. Occasionally I will remove a batter-soaked spoon from my mouth long enough to bellow ‘One hour left!’ ‘Ten minutes!’ ‘Thirty seconds!’ or ‘Time’s up!’ before returning to the bowl like a velociraptor to Bob Peck’s face.

  After the Royal Tour the other presenter promenades around the benches ‘doing emos’. Ostensibly, this is the part where we discover a little more about what makes the contestants tick – their backgrounds, families and personal history. What we’re also trying to do, however, is work out how many overwrought puns and how much seaside smuttiness we can squeeze out of the situation. We’ll begin with the double entendres: tarts, buns, soggy bottoms, ginger nuts and my own particular favourite, rough puff. Then, when those have been exhausted, we’ll move to single entendres – e.g., ‘That baguette looks like a penis’ and ‘Those macaroons resemble tits.’

  It’s then back to the green room for a couple of tots of rum (medicinal) with Bezza (one of Mary’s many nicknames) and a carb-crash in front of the telly. Paul grabs the remote so he can watch a Grand Prix or the Isle of Man TT. We wrest it from his grasp and put on a box set of Mad Men. Mary silently endures but secretly wishes for The Jeremy Kyle Show, to which she is now addicted. Mel falls asleep, mouth open, within a nanosecond. Mel’s capacity for sleep is the stuff of legend.

  Several hours later we reappear in the tent. There’s the sound of a dozen mixers and the intoxicating smell of lemon zest and caramel. Atoms of icing sugar dance in the air. We sit and wait. Wait for television gold.

  And, sure enough, it happens. A baker will drop their bake. That mirror-finish ganache, that tower of biscuits, that scale model of the Parthenon – whatever it might be, crashes to the ground and mingles with a furry floor tile. Suddenly, the entire camera resources of the United Kingdom are on hand to film it. There are more eyes on that spattered sponge than there are trained on the battle-torn streets of Homs in Syria. At some point that baker will do a cry and I will hug him/her until he/she feels uncomfortable and then he/she will do a snot on my blazer. I vow to dry-clean this blazer, but then life gets in the way and I forget. And then the next series comes along; I drag it out of the wardrobe and, hey presto, it takes a small axe to hack off the dried sadness-slime.

  Then comes the judging. Paul’s judging technique has evolved over the years into the finely honed act it is now. First he embeds his thumb deep into the bake. This thumb is always stained blue, as it has been loitering deep within his jeans pocket for several hours. On removing his thumb, he performs a series of knowing laughs, interspersed with ‘underbaked’ and ‘overproved’ barked at random. Mary says very little, but sets her laser eyes to either ‘I love you’ or ‘I’m going to kill you.’ When I say Mary says very little, what I mean is that she says very little that is broadcastable on a pre-watershed show. The woman has the face of an angel and the mouth of a docker.

  The truth is we’re family, with our own unique relationships but united under the banner of love. Paul is Kato to my Clouseau. We constantly try to batter each other with the plastic prop baguettes that litter the tent. He’ll sneak up behind me and karate-chop me in the neck with a polymer brioche. I’ll clatter him in the knackers with a fake lemon drizzle. It’s the love that dare not speak its name. We laugh at his high-performance sports car, which Mel and I attempt either to steal or deface every series. He laughs at my car, but for completely different reasons. He’s funny and kind. He’s heavy, he’s my brother.

  Mary is one of the most extraordinary people I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. I love her, and it’s a badge of honour that she’d consider me a friend. It’s as good as having the Queen as your mate. She is the most unique of souls, walking, as she does, a tightrope between regal dignity and childish mischief. Young at heart and old of soul. In her seventies she went clubbing at Pacha in Ibiza. At the wrap party to series four she downed tequila slammers, forgoing the salt and lemon as a sideshow distraction that needlessly delayed the passage of grog from glass to throat. ‘What a palaver,’ she said before tossing the fruit over her shoulder and sliding yet another shot down her neck.

  And we love the bakers too – we’ve never had a bad one yet. And by the time we get to meet their families in week ten we feel like we know them because we have spent months listening to their stories and sharing their lives.

  Is it strange that the show has been co-opted by the tabloids? Yes. Is that intense ownership of the show sometimes responsible for people saying horribly censorious and humourless things about us? Yes. Is it likely that sections of the above will be taken out of context and printed in a red top in an effort to drum up moral outrage? Of course. You’re welcome. Come on, lads. Try proving me wrong.

  And yes, sometimes, when the sound is down, the show can look a little like a UKIP recruitment video, with its jingoistic imagery, bunting and green and pleasant landscape. That notwithstanding, I love it. I love the legendary Andy Devonshire, who helms it all so impeccably. I love the production team, the crew, the home economists. It’s a treat to come back every year and see the same faces (with ever-bigger waistlines) joining in with us.

  Over time it has become the show that it looks like to the general public. But let me tell you, it wasn’t always that way.

  First series are always hard. And by God this was hard. In its first year Bake Off was a touring affair, with the tent dismantled and reassembled in a different part of the UK each week.

  For the first weekend we were in beautiful picture-perfect Kingham in Oxfordshire, tent pitched slap bang in the middle of the village green like croissant-obsessed aliens had landed. Roswell-in-the-Wold, as it now resembled, couldn’t have been a more perfect spot.

  Except.

  Except the rain was biblical from the get-go. The heavens opened at 6 a.m. and they stayed open all weekend. The sky moved from black to slate grey to black again. The catering arrived at 7 a.m. in the form of a man called Barry. No gourmand was ever called Barry. There will never be a Masterchef champion called Barry. No Barry will accept a Michelin star. That is not the lot of Barrys. Barrys sell cars in Walford, they don’t make luncheon.* So, Barry parked up his burger van and all day flipped Shergar steaks on a filthy griddle.

  There were no takers.

  Oftentimes, when you start a big show like this, there is a period of adjustment while the different agencies involved try to rough-hew the production into the shape they want it. Their idea of what the show is might not tally with that of the broadcasters or the presenters. And so it was with Bake Off.

  The production company was used to making award-winning, intense and provocative documentar
ies on multiculturalism and poverty, and took this journalistic ethos right into Bake Off. Suddenly the bakers were asked rather heavier, personal questions than they had been expecting.

  ‘I just wanted to talk about my tea loaf,’ sobbed one of the contestants under his umbrella after a particularly intense interrogation. ‘I just want Mary to come and have a look at it …’

  ‘Why Mary? Do you have issues with your mother?’ asked a producer.

  ‘No, I just wanted her to tell me why it’s collapsed in the middle.’

  A tense pause for effect.

  ‘Have you collapsed. Is it you that’s collapsed?’

  ‘Please, please just get Mary … I need Mary.’

  After seeing not one, not two, but three of the bakers sobbing, we decided to take a stand. This wasn’t the sort of show we were used to presenting, and so, at 9 a.m. on day two

  we walked out.

  Yes, there really is no rule by which you can measure my or Mel’s ability to commit career suicide. First we exited Light Lunch just at the point it was becoming truly successful. Now we were walking out of a show that was to become almost as powerful as Top Gear, only without the casual racism, misogynist ‘banter’ and punching of co-workers.

  There were meetings. Many meetings. We all learned lessons. I learned there’s no point getting uppity about things once they’ve been recorded. It’s too late by then. If I want change, I’ll effect it on the shop floor. So nowadays, if one of the bakers gets upset or overcome with emotion, I simply start swearing and libelling pharmaceutical companies like there’s no tomorrow, and I know that it won’t get broadcast. I know they are safe. More and more, that’s the nature of our job. Pastoral care. Everyone on the show does their bit to make sure that the stressful, silly hand of television touches the contestants enough to change their lives but not so much it bends them out of shape altogether.

  That first series was a slog. Not only did we routinely do fourteen-hour days, but we over-recorded to a ridiculous degree. Remember the historical interviews with a woman dressed as an Anglo Saxon warrior princess? The poetry of the Mayor of Sandwich? The pudding throwers of Yorkshire? Nope. Because none of them made it to screen. It turns out that simply watching nice people make nice cakes is all you need, and everything else is superfluous.

  The final of series one took place at Fulham Palace in London. The location scouts had excelled themselves; it looked great, the perfect grandiose backdrop for a season climax, plus it was close to home. There was just one thing they hadn’t accounted for:

  it was on the Heathrow flight path.

  Not just on it. Right on it. Every thirty seconds, sometimes less, during daylight hours the belly of a jumbo blocked out the sun above us. Added to which the noise was deafening. There was nothing we could do but soldier on.

  Mel/Sue:

  For the last six weeks Britain’s best amateur bakers have been whipping themselves into a frenzy, bashing their dough and caramelizing their nuts in an effort to win the title of –

  Sudden roar of a Boeing 747 from Addis Ababa.

  Director:

  CUT! [Waits for quiet] Go again!

  Mel/Sue:

  It’s the final weekend as we reach the conclusion to our search for Britain’s best amateur baker. Inside that tent our plucky threesome have donned their aprons, brandished their whisks –

  Airbus A380 from Singapore rumbles across the sky.

  Director:

  CUT! [Waits for quiet] Go again!

  Mel/Sue:

  It’s the moment they’ve been waiting for – our final trio of muffin makers are bracing themselves for the biggest weekend of their lives. Grab your kugelhopfs and –

  Boom of a 777 en route from Beijing.

  Director:

  CUT! [Waits for quiet] Quick, there’s a lull! Go again!

  Mel/Sue

  [gabbling] IT’S THE FINAL! THERE’S THREE LEFT!

  Director:

  Great! Now let’s try that piece to camera about the history of the spotted dick.

  In the end the noise proved so disruptive that for the entire finale weekend we were forced to trim all pieces to camera down to a few hasty words. If you watch that show back, you’ll see everything delivered in desperate, staccato sound bites – rushed through before the next plane in the Heathrow queue rumbles into view.

  Me:

  Last challenge. How are you feeling?

  Baker:

  Well –

  Me:

  [cutting in] Great. BAKE!

  By the time we got to the judging the whole thing was starting to feel more like They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? than a baking competition. There were now only two bakers in the running, so we reckoned we stood a half-decent chance of leaving before nightfall. We were wrong. Just at the point we could take no more, Paul and Mary opted to get all meta on our arses. This meant that the judging for the final of series one took FOUR AND A HALF HOURS.

  Yep. You heard that correctly.

  FOUR AND A HALF HOURS.

  Here are some things you can do in four and a half hours.

  Fly to Moscow.

  Complete a marathon.

  Begin and end a relationship (if you’re me).

  Give birth to a child.

  What Paul and Mary elected to do in four and a half hours is argue over whether or not a cupcake is a cake. Is it a little cake? Is it a muffin? Is it a light bite? More importantly, what is cake? It was exactly the kind of ontological badinage television was invented for.

  By the time the show finally ended, I only knew one thing.

  I never, ever wanted to do it again.

  But I did. Something about the combination of people, the allure of a tent in green fields, the flap of bunting, pulled me back. Now, after six series, the show is a finely oiled machine. Plus, with all the new technology – CGI and green screen – and the judicious placing of mirrors we get the whole thing done in twenty minutes.

  BAAAAKE! Overworked! Nice buns! I’ve still got a taste of plums in my mouth! Halfway through! That looks a little underbaked! Ten minutes left! You’ve dropped your croquembouche! Time’s up! Here’s Mary and Paul! Soggy bottom! And the winner is …

  In all seriousness, I often get asked questions about the show, so I thought I’d take an opportunity to answer some of the most regularly posed.

  FAQS

  Sue, what are you and Mel like behind the scenes of Bake Off?

  Well, we’re exactly like we are on screen, except instead of puns, we make very nuanced literary allusions to Russian novelists.

  Is Mary Berry real?

  As real as rum and vodka and wine and whisky. Very real.

  What does Paul style his hair with?

  Let me answer that with another question. Have you seen There’s Something About Mary?

  Why is there a long-running feud between Dapper Laughs and Mary Berry?

  Because he misappropriated her catchphrase, ‘proper moist’.

  Do you bake?

  Not really. Here’s why. There are really good shops and some of them serve cake. Added to which, I am mates with Mary Berry, so never go hungry.

  Has Bake Off changed you?

  Yes. I am now made up of 50 per cent carbon and 50 per cent lemon drizzle. I can no longer see my feet when I step on a set of
scales. And I cannot go anywhere in the world without someone shouting ‘BAAAKE!’

  Will we see the series two squirrel again?

  No, I’m afraid not. After the tabloid furore, the squirrel was forced to go into hiding. He has now been put into a squirrel protection programme under a different name, for fear of reprisals.

  Shame! Will there be any more close-ups of woodland genitals?

  There is a sheep’s udder in series five. I’m afraid that secondary sexual characteristics are as far as we can go these days without there being a tsunami of manufactured outrage.

  Can you remember any of the bakes?

  No. I can remember all of them.

  In my head there’s a Rolodex of every single mouthful I’ve tasted on the show. I’m like a sponge savant, able to recall with breathtaking accuracy the taste of each and every bake: Mary-Anne’s Midnight Mocha, Jo Wheatley’s Banana Mousse, Ryan’s Key Lime Pie – all sorted and available for recall at the flick of a synaptic switch. I am tortured by it.

  ‘My name is Susan and I’m a sugar addict.’

  ‘Hello, Susan …’

  What will next year’s Bake Off hold? Is there a format change? Could you give us any hints about the first episode?

  OK, but they’re going to KILL me for this.

  Here’s a sneak preview of episode one of series seven.

  8.00 p.m. Opening credits. Close-up of tent flaps suggestively swaying in the breeze. Cut away to lambs gambolling in field. Will we see their genitals? Maybe later. For now we move into a kitchen. A child is smearing MARY BERRY in red icing on the walls. The music swells. Suddenly a massive celebratory Hungarian ring swings into view. It covers the child’s face. On it we read the legend BAKE OFF.