The wait is over. Thousands - millions of us - have been going about our lives for these past 10 months with an inescapable sense that something is missing, a sense of unease. A deep existential yearning for something outside of ourselves, to fill a void within. And it turns out that this is actually a deep-rooted need to watch a group of strangers competitively bake in a rural gazebo while they have their hard-work pastries et al. ruthlessly dissected by Paul Hollywood - the flint-eyed personification of a husky. This is what we have needed; it is the balm, the tincture, the ointment required to soothe our troubled souls - wearied and bruised from a year of increasing global strife. We, as a society, need to once a year see Paul Hollywood tear apart a scone with his bear/bare-hands, prod its doughy centre and with a look of profound disappointment etched across his face, before informing the retired auctioneer from Hull responsible for them that they're "a bit dry" - our succour is the retired auctioneer's dismay.
Well, last night's season debut, the first plump offering of 2018's promising bounty, did not yield us a retired auctioneer thrust into despondency over some over-baked scones, but it did offer plenty more besides. With the conclusion of the first episode it is incumbent on me to share with you the state of affairs that most pleased me.
1) The Most Wholesome Show On Television:
As someone who is currently embroiled in an emotional war of attrition with Ken Burns' fantastic documentary recently brought to Netflix, The Vietnam War, a television show that does not feature documentary footage of scared locals being rounded up and executed for collusion with the Viet Cong is a welcome relief. The Great British Bake Off, is, like the goods its contestants create, comfort food. It is the equivalent of a welcome hug from a dear aunt at Christmas, at once warming and familiar. It is the welcome return home after a long period away. It is, in short the anti-thesis of the Vietnam War and - short of Prue Leith absolutely losing it after eating a disappointingly under-baked profiterole - made by, for my money, Welsh Jon - and going on some bloody rampage that culminates in a stand-off with local police and some reserve army units - it will remain thus.
2) Noel Fielding's Interesting Transformation:
The Greek philosopher Heraclitus coined the oft-used phrase "You cannot step into the same river twice" to describe how everything in this world is in a constant state of flux. The world around us, and indeed our very selves, are ever-changing. I do not think that ol' H-Clitus specifically had Noel Fielding and his rapidly shifting appearance in mind when he came up with the phrase, but at the same time I do not know that he didn't. Regardless it seems a pertinent descriptor of how Noel Fielding's look seems to morph with a near unfathomable speed. Last year he looked like an affable dinner-lady who knows her way around a tasteful, and tactfully deployed, risqué comment. This year Noel Fielding seems to have modeled himself on a stranger from a government sponsored ad warning children to keep away from sinister looking strangers. He resembles a disgraced Elvis impersonator who, in spite of his tattered reputation can still muster a warm smile. His transformation has been rapid. It has been total. You cannot step in the same river of Noel Fielding twice.
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3) Paul Hollywood's Handshake Hyperinflation:
The Paul Hollywood handshake. It was, for many years in the show, the rarest of rare occurrences. So few of the bakers that passed through the, reportedly, deplorably humid gazebo in the original seasons of the show would taste the rich delight of having Paul Hollywood - his beard flecked with crumbs, a wry smile dancing 'pon his lips - slide his large, velvet-soft hand into yours, give two quick pumps and compliment you on the exquisite flavours of the large bread effigy of a pregnant owl that you'd just baked.
Last season however, Paul Hollywood started to severely flood the market with handshakes. It seemed any ol' sod who so much as half-heartedly Googled a recipe for an apple pie or such, within a matter of minutes found their hand firmly clasped in the testerone-adled embrace of Mr. Hollywood. He was in danger of - and I don't invoke this point of comparison lightly - rapidly devaluing the handshake's worth to an extent not seen since the catastrophic hyperinflation that ravaged Weimar German currency in 1923. Thankfully, in the intervening months since the close of the last season, they've evidently sought prudent advice on the matter as there was not a single handshake doled out on last night's episode, thus helping to bolster the, once crumbling, integrity of the Hollywood handshake.
4) How On Earth Is Terry Still There?
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Terry. Oh, dear Terry, your baking is as poor as your moustache is needlessly ornate. Let it never be said that Terry does not have lofty ambitions in the kitchen. Terry is a man who in his introductory VT, was filmed stranded in the middle of a winding country road atop a horse that was blatantly ignoring his increasingly frantic instructions to move. Terry is a man who has a herd of sheep. Terry is a man who tried, during the first challenge - in which the contestants were asked to make 24 biscuits, uniform in their consistency - to render, through the medium of chocolate, the face of some of these very sheep from his herd onto his biscuits. Like Icarus, Terry flew too close to the sun, and consequently it was to warm for the chocolate renderings of his sheep to set in time. He also dismally failed at making Wagon Wheels.
However, his showstopper in the biscuit selfie challenge, was both his saving grace and, in this writer's opinion, the monstrosity that should've cemented his dismissal from the show. Tasked with creating large biscuit based selfies of themselves, Terry produced some sort of horrifying pre-made deathmask of his own face, over which he moulded a brandy snap. The resultant brandy snap mask was legitimately troubling. Haunting in a way that most horror films can only aspire to. Staring into its pale blue lifeless eyes, you feel your pulse simultaneously quicken and deaden, a thin film of icy sweat begins to trickle down your back. The brandy snap eyes draw you in. You can't escape them, they want your soul. Terry's brandy-snap effigy wants to steal your very soul - though it was reportedly delicious.
What's more, his personal effigy is also directly reminiscent of the embalmed face of Bolshevik revolutionary, Vladimir Lenin. Consequently I feel he should've gone home instead of Imelda - whose biscuit selfie did not resemble the mummified remains of any deceased Soviet leader.
5) It's Refreshing Wholesomeness Is Soothing (Part 2):
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Given that Love Island has grown, undulating and engorged, to such an unfathomable extent that it has cemented itself as the unmissable reality television show of the summer, it is a welcome change to watch a show that is not wracked with horniness. The febrile sexual tension that permeated the whole season of Love Island was so brittle that it felt all the contestants were only one 'heated-confrontation-over-the-cleaning-rota-of-a-smoothie-maker' away from descending into something so depraved as to be unbroadcastable - and which would cause the pool to have all its water drained and replaced for hygiene reasons.
The Great British Bake Off is a profoundly wholesome affair. It is a Sunday dinner with extended family. It is a day out perusing various house plants in a local independent garden centre. There is, and we should all be thankful of this, only the most minimal threat of people engaging in 'hand-stuff' without any warning. Though there as always remains the small but potent risk that Paul Hollywood will at some stage be so overcome by the deliciousness of an eclair etc. that he will do something so unspeakable to an item of pastry that it causes a national scandal and prompts undignified resignation from the show.
Thankfully however, there was no indication in last night's show that such an event may come to pass.
6) Dan, Dan Does Not Want His Infant Child Stealing His Thunder:
During the biscuit selfie challenge, Dan was under no illusions of who the star of the show ought to be. It was him. It was Dan. Despite the fact that the scene he had picked to recreate in the form of a large biscuit being one depicting him holding his infant child in his arms, he knew where he wanted the attention. He described the month he spent in America, after he and his partner had collected their child from its surrogate mother, as the happiest in his life. Yet Dan was not, for a single second, about to tolerate the baby having anything so eye-catching as a defined body or face, and risk it encroaching on him being the rightful centre of attention in the biscuit selfie. As such he chose to represent his infant child during - the self-described - happiest moment of his life as a sort of engorged bean.
While I think we can all agree this article has more than run its course, it could amble yet longer, recounting the many other highlights that were gifted to us from last night. But alas, I have been advised by my superiors that it would "not be a prudent use of mine, or the company's time" to continue and that I should "wind that fucking article up already". So, alas, we must part ways, but I will leave you with a quote from, I believe the Dalai Lama, "It's fucking massive news that Bake Off's back!"
'Hear, hear,' Mr. Lama, 'Hear, hear'.
