mostly david ephgrave

Forgive my hyperbole, but I was so shocked by Manon’s surprise exit from tonight’s Bake Off I’m still recovering from the whiplash. While he’s been a clear front-runner throughout the series, judging from his performance this week I thought it was a done deal that Rahul would go. I was so certain I’d metaphorically brought his car around to the tent entrance with the engine still running; even he looked sure too, displaying the low level delirium (if there’s such a thing) of a person who’d fully come to terms with the state of play and was relieved to be done with it. So why did Manon get voted out? The answer is I don’t really know. Paul Hollywood made a few references to her baking more like a French person than a Danish one tonight (which was the theme of the show) but even this feedback sound like it had been tacked on afterwards; her baking may have been a tad less complicated this week, but there’s still no reason to banish her when someone else had so clearly struggled und...

If a typical episode of the Bake Off isn’t enough to raise your blood pressure, tonight they made biscuit chandeliers. This was the Blue Peter Advent Crown, Tracey Island and Mark Curry punching the head of a Lego statue all rolled into one, or like fifteen baby elephants excreting on the floor of Television Centre while the nation watched; I’ve never been so tense and I suffer from anxiety. It’s fair to say I watch each installment of GBBO through clenched fingers, and with every passing week it gets harder to see through the gaps, but tonight's took the biscuit, to use an obvious pun; the idea of presenting them as a mobile seems alien to someone who keeps his in barrel (and one the size of a water butt). While tonight’s viewing was tense I still summed up the courage to tweet along at safe intervals. See below for what was said and when. 8:02PM: Today, Terry's come disguised as a stereotypical Frenchman. 8:07PM: ...

Tonight saw the second installment of this year’s Bake-Off, which once again made people from all walks of life up and down the country disproportionately stressed about cake. The sticking point, as ever, seemed to be the fact the bakers in the tent aren’t given enough time to do what they do in such inevitably hot conditions; surely the most common factor to come up in Paul, Prue or Mary(oh, how I miss Mary)’s - critique would be how much better the final product would have been if it had had time to set. It would be hard enough to bake in such a tight window in a normal kitchen without doing it in a marquee under bright lights (on what always seems to be the hottest day of the year). As ever, I watched the programme through my fingers, occasionally disbanding my hand-based fortress to tweet. I do this because the people of the internet need to know the opinion of a man who seldom bakes; this is the service I offer to the nation for free.   8:06PM: I'm a nice active li...

It would be little surprise to anyone who knows me that I love cake. It would also be no shock to those who follow me on Twitter that I like tweeting along to competitive cake-baking, in much the same way I like to tweet along to competitive ballroom dancing (#Strictly) or competitive hyper-intelligent student quizzing (#UniversityChallenge). So it was that I found myself doing just that, not long after stepping off the train from Edinburgh to home, as I watched the first in the current series of the Bake-Off on C4. It can be disconcerting when a new series starts as you're slightly thrown by all the unfamiliar faces in such a familiar format; consequently, I’m usually at least a few weeks in before I can comfortably recall the names of most people who appear on it and - more importantly - which annoy me. Here are yesterday’s Bake-Off ramblings: 8:12PM: "He's updating the thirteenth Century aberfrow..."; about tim...

Like many people across the UK, I spoilered myself in the wake of Prue Leith’s accidental Twitter announcement of the winner of this year’s Bake Off this morning in advance of tonight’s broadcast, rather than watch it in ignorance, when so many of the nation (my wife included) already knew the outcome. To be fair to myself, I didn’t actually look it up, instead letting my wife tell me when she got home from work, as I didn’t like the thought of her knowing and me not while we watched it together; I in fact predicted who it was and was instantly disappointed, as I’ve not been able to warm to Sophie, what with her cold tone and her know-it-all way. I may have misheard it, but I could have sworn I heard her describe baking as “a calling”, which could have caused me to vomit up a limb; I don’t know how anyone could use terminology like that without a hint of irony. First off, here are a couple of tweets I fired off in response to today's accidental BBC message: 3:...

The one plus-side to the fact I had to cancel my show at Leicester Square Theatre tonight due to the onset of my old foe labyrinthitis (damn my left inner-ear) was I was able to watch this week’s edition of the Bake Off when it went out. I’d still rather have been doing my show, of course, but in reality I couldn’t; I had to abandon a run of it during the day as I felt like I was going to faint - and while I may just have been able to get through it at home, going into London with all my gear in tow when my head was all over the place would have been very difficult; I curse that fateful day back in 2010 when I was in the midst of doing Dreamboats and Petticoats, when the shittiest of shitty conditions first reared its ugly head. While I enjoyed tonight’s GBBO instalment, I was sad to see another of my favourite bakers go, though to be fair, I’ve liked them all this series, with the exception of one (*cough* Sophie *cough*). As Mr Hollywood said himself, this week's res...

It was with a degree of sadness that we waved goodbye to Liam during tonight’s Great British Bake Off. Personally, I was surprised he’d be even close to going out when he was so consistent, but it just goes to show just how quickly your fortunes can change if you have a bad week; so it was for Yan last time around and so it was for Liam tonight. Either way, he’s got a naturally lovely quality which I’m sure will stand him in good stead if he decides to persue baking in a media context. Whatever he does I’m sure the experience has given him confidence; he’s very self-assured for one so young. Here’s tonight’s tweets. Enjoy: 8:01PM: The Bake That Time Forgot. 8:01PM: I banged out three good bakes once. 8:02PM: The Bedfordshire Clanger was Oliver Postgate's favourite dessert. 8:03PM: Paul Hollywood's bits to camera are beautifully lit. 8:05PM: I've always favoured the Hertfordshire Professor Yaffle ...

Tonight I had to ask myself a searching question: how am I supposed to survive the rest of this year’s Great British Bake Off now Yan’s no longer in the tent? She’s been my favourite baker of the series; not only for her clear technical ability, but also for her attitude. She has an amusing preciseness that’s very entertaining and her creations have been exceptional almost across the board; until tonight, that is, when her luck ran out a bit. This was a shame, as it would have only taken slightly different circumstances for things to fall the other way. As ever, I tweeted along with tonight’s show; see below for my mumblings: 8:01PM: "Absolute Disaster"; my favourite Bowie album. 8:03PM: STEVEN: "The Naked Bake Off"; The Great British Clothes Off, surely? 8:07PM: Steven's making Italian Style Cannoli; so he's making cannoli then? 8:08PM: My favourite Roy Orbison song is Only Cannoli. ...