The Great British Bake Off Episode 1 - A Commentary

I can’t get a read on Paul Hollywood.

Ali looks like he’s about to lose all sphinctal control.

Is Glen modelling his look on Hollywood?

Mary Berry is a magnificent woman.

Becca. Put the grapefruit away. Hollywood’s eyes say it all.

Howard is from the future.

Mark is a poor man’s Glen. Making a cake shaped like a lemon sounds difficult, but is it really?

Who is that girl?

Ali, are you kidding with this rose and lychee number? Only works in a martini honey (my signature drink as you will surely know).

Her name is Ruby.

I love a piping bag.

Obviously Mark’s lemon shaped cake plan went to hell.

OHMYGODRUBYSCRYINGWHYISSHECRYINGOHTHISISAWFUL.

People are scattering flowers over their cakes. Is this a thing?

Apple and Pecan? In comes the hippy ship.

Oh Howard, we don’t want a seeping filling. Come come.

Of course you are in shock Ali, it’s your default state.

What’s this Sue? Historical context?

She says the courting cake is back: We say it never left.

Do Hollywood and Mary socialise outside the show? I get the impression Mary has better things to do.

Two girls have told me they fancy Toby. Apparently, uselessness is sexy. Thank heavens for that.

Mary likes a good rise and nice thickness.

Am I just descending into smutty innuendo? Maybe.

“It has happened before. Salt rum baba. 2012.” Fucking mare.

I wonder if ‘fucking mare’ is an accepted truncation of ‘fucking nightmare’ or whether I was just being too cool. Best check.

Has Paul been wearing velour the entire episode?

Don’t Google ‘fucking mare’.

Show stopper round? Are they ACTUALLY going to bake Hugh Jackman?

A common misinterpretation of Berkley’s theory there Ruby.

“Still wet inside.” Oh grow up.

Tiny Tempah. Nice one Mel.

Toby isn’t so much baking as self harming. Any more kitchen plasters and he can join the blue man group.

Howard’s bear blows my mind.

Rob to win.

Sketchy

It was things lavatorial that lured me to Sketch, ten years late. I’d heard you could wee in a giant egg which, as regular readers will surely know, has always been an ambition of mine.

First impressions were good. A wonderful Georgian exterior and two resplendent people on the door. The man - bowler hatted. The lady - dark hair and brows, the delicacy of her sylph like frame belied by strength of her cool, blue, appraising gaze. I suspect she writes when she has the time. Which is neither here nor there, that isn’t what we’re here to talk about.

My friends and I had planned this wrong: The Gallery was booked out for people we were not, and we had not reserved a spot in the (by all reports delightful) Lecture Room restaurant. Thus, in being restricted to the ground floor bar, I concede that my experiences are not wholly, or even slightly, representative.

The bar had enough fruit on it to supply all the fondue parties in Thatcherian England. Doubtful Louis Quinze chairs were strewn about the place. A straw pole of the clientele revealed they worked in Oil, or Gas, or possibly both. And it was very loud indeed.

WHAT?

I SAID IT WAS VERY LOUD INDEED.

I wasn’t convinced by the DJ at first, but then he seemed to mix (technical term) Michael Jackson and Rhianna which brought the room to shuddering eargasm.

I ordered an Old Fashioned because it seemed appropriate. To his credit, the barman ran the bourbon he was going to use past me, though moved about a lot as he made the drink. I’m not sure why.

Visiting the bathroom was similar to taking a light hallucinogenic. Mirrors, blue lights, nursery rhyme music. There was a water feature that, looking back, might have been a urinal. Also, the stairs were melting.

Cloud Atlas in review

For Cultbox.