Consistency is Everything: 2013 Great British Bake Off

Not loving this crew tbh

That one guy is a comedian seeking publicity right? nobody is that stupid.

Norman's got potential. The rest are nothing.

Scientist is my bro

I never want to see Toby again.

Im tellin u he'll be on bbc3 all winter

custard tarts is the worst challenge ever

i hate this show, and the london-riots-cleanup-twitter-crew that watch it

I am not in london and would not have cleaned up after the riots fwiw

I used to hate the idea of it but this year my bf is baking something from it every week. All the people I know who are Into Cooking seem to like it so on that level it's legit I guess. Anyway I've got into it, I like everyone left except the wacky scientist and the twee design baker. I love Ruby and her comeback from her first-week meltdown, and Howard and his eeyorish self, but rooting for Kimberley

I never watched this before but started this year as I have become obsessed by bread. I'm faintly disgusted with myself for watching a show which includes union jack bunting, but I'm hooked. Love Howard (his little pastry bear is the best thing anyone has done thus far) but think Kimberley will win. Hate the gimmicky woman and can't stand Ruby and her relentless monotone. Excited for biscuit towers next week.

with bread, even

kimberley won't win, she's the best by far and therefore will be in the final three and robbed by a 'shock' judges pick of someone who ought to have been turfed out weeks before. probably the big lad with the shmig.

going by last year, like.

pretty happy with the final. pretty disgusted with the things i'm reading about ruby from the press & public, people have the most bizarre and fevered imaginations

i love ruby but i also want kimberley to win b/c i think she has a pretty amazing talent in terms of flavours. ruby seems pretty gifted in this area too but is obviously a lot less polished. i came round on frances after the judges picked up on the style-over-substance thing - it's funny, unlike eg beca, frances's recipes never SOUND like they're going to lack flavour.

Ruby has even made fans of the show hate watching it. As was read to me from twitter earlier, "you know that someone has irrritated you do ridiculous levels when even the way she blinks has started to annoy you."

i don't even remotely understand what's meant to be so annoying about her. mild self-deprecation is that terrible to watch? my god you'd all hate me if i was on tv. i completely identify with how she turns into a panicky mess under pressure. (it's not so much self-doubt as perfectionism.) i'd have been the same but worse at her age

Some of the things written about Ruby are Just Not On, but that shouldn't detract from her intense unlikeability. She's all the awful people you encountered at school/uni.

Her self-deprecation is more pathological than mild. She sulks. She didn't even clap when Kimberley won the technical challenge.

although i do know that there are people who apparently get annoyed by anything she does.

worth pointing out the huge undercurrent of misogyny, not just vis-à-vis the "flirtation" narrative conjured up out of literally nowhere (where is the evidence for this?) but in that when the young male bakers of this series were self-deprecating and panicky they just got "aw, how cute" reactions.

She mugs and sulks and rolls her eyes and acts beyond-demonstrative-into-childishness and its every week drama and this week its toppled over into too much tbh

Agree on frances, the judges desperate to criticise her every time based on a lazy concept they have of her since week two or three.

how is she dislikeable though? what the hell does "likeability" even mean, 90% of the time it's just a bossy "know your place". she has a personality that rings true.

also this shouldn't need pointing out but it's a heavily edited cut that we see, not the totality of someone's personality.

Havent read anything about her tbh why would anyone read about gbb except for here

Just watching now, i liked beca v much :(

xp 90% lol ok

ruby is nowhere near as OTT as you all make out. for a good 3/4 of her screen time across the series she's been good-natured, funny and perfectly normal, but she has a 20-year-old inexperienced baker's natural reaction to stress and things going wrong

also, she obviously has a very strong talent for flavours.

i liked beca as well but idk what she was thinking with her ideas this week. a slab of stilton in a macaron? at least cream it or melt it. and then banana overload in the showstopper :/ but beca pretty much got to the SF by turning in a B grade every week, telling that she was never star baker

Yeah thats v fair

Stilton slab was brutal

remember watching this show like 10 years ago when it was food instead of baking, I kinda enjoyed it but there was always the thing of I can't actually taste the food so how the fuck do I know who "should" win, do I trust these judges (I did not)

xps I do think Ruby has prob suffered from the general lack of worthwhile personalities in this series. She stood out more than necessary.

Fair enough 'likeable' is a shit word to use but I don't like her because I don't like people who sulk or people who are obviously perfectionists but constantly put themselves down. Her personality does ring true aye, but not in a good way.

My only interface with her has been on the show and having the odd thing from twitter read out to me, so I can't comment on the 'not on'-ness of anything written, but watching tonight I actually found myself questioning whether her levels of apparent self-loathing were actually mental illness rather than just her personality.

I did notice tonight apart from a quick statement about her opera cake not looking quite right - when it was a complete disaster compared to the others - they didn't say a single bad thing about her final effort.

And as for the flirtation, it's horrendously obvious. Paul's 'strong manly arms' ("ooh, imagine him holding you") and the flirtation ("ooh, just listen to his treacly voice") are 90% of the appeal of the show to women if mums net is any indication and 100% if female journalists are any indication.

I don't like people who sulk or people who are obviously perfectionists but constantly put themselves down.

i am one of these people :( maybe less so now but at 20 there was no disguising any of it. being a perfectionist is pretty horrible tbh.

I did notice tonight apart from a quick statement about her opera cake not looking quite right - when it was a complete disaster compared to the others - they didn't say a single bad thing about her final effort.

i haven't noticed any favouring of her. if either of them have a soft spot for her it's mary (funny how people are quick to ignore her presence!), who's noted ruby's lack of equipment/experience a couple of times. they certainly mentioned her opera cake presentation was lacking. but it seems obvious she's the anti-frances in that her bakes look like messes but taste excellent, and taste trumps looks - maybe this is where the disconnect comes from?

And as for the flirtation, it's horrendously obvious. Paul's 'strong manly arms' ("ooh, imagine him holding you") and the flirtation ("ooh, just listen to his treacly voice") are 90% of the appeal of the show to women if mums net is any indication and 100% if female journalists are any indication.

i am not a paul fan but surely what you're referring to is a general flirtatious air, or flirting with the camera, rather than specifically flirting with ruby?

:( sorry lex.

all your other points otm.

she's the anti-frances

She certainly is, Paul went on and on about Frances and the use of lavender then criticised her when it didn't stand out enough for him to complain about the taste of it - he then queried Ruby's use of saffron then never bothered to mention it again, and clearly didn't taste it. So why didn't she get the same level of criticism as Frances?

I think an element of the viewership is happy with general flirting but when it's only happening to one contestant it's a bit crepey. Coincidentally to the one who was a model.

one of them (mary?) definitely said they could taste the saffron.

i can't think of a single actual example of paul flirting specifically with ruby or vice versa. like, it was not something that had even crossed my mind before i first saw the accusation levelled (by the daily mail, naturally).

I must have missed her saying it then, and I was paying more attention than usual to see whether saffron was mentioned.

I can't think of a specific example of the flirting but it seems more overt and directed. Maybe it's a throwback from him doing the US version.

Mel and Sue flirt with Ruby a fair bit but I've noticed Paul doing so too. I think it's fine. It's a telly programme and she has charisma so, so what?

I'm so in love with Mel btw.

very glad that the anti-backlash backlash w/r/t ruby is in full swing

love how she hasn't bothered disguising her contempt for any of it, whether from the mail or raymond blanc or twitter randoms

if i didn't think kimberley was so talented i'd be 100% #teamruby

Ha ha, I'm not a heavy twitter user so I've completly missed the Ruby hate. I detected no flirting whatsoever, and yeh, my flirt-dar is a bit wonky but not completly broken. I don't have the anclination to google it; what is it about ruby that's got people all narky?

#teamkimberley for sure. She aced that swiss roll/blamange thing. She's always in control, knows the next step, and does everything with such exactitude and skill. I'd be v surprised if she doesn't win it.

apparently the only acceptable personality type on tv (especially if you're a woman) is to be chirpy and likeable (but not too confident, like kimberley, otherwise you're just smug!). you're not allowed to be upset with yourself or pessimistic or self-deprecatory (even in a very mild and self-aware way) like ruby has been. also you must be faking it and manipulative because no gifted person in the history of the world has been a real pessimist.

also if your cooking looks a bit messy, even if both judges praise your flavours above everyone else's, it means you're a terrible baker who can only have been put through to the final because of favouritism.

Em thinks Kimberley is too smug, but I just read that as competency.

also i genuinely am not sure whether people realise they're seeing heavily-edited versions of people's personalities? kimberley's actually hinted on twitter that she had a couple of disasters that just haven't been shown.

kimberley's just confident of her abilities - she's a decade older than ruby, who only started baking at all two years ago. in 10 years' time i'd bet ruby displays the same type of authority...

I like Kimberley when she's reacting to criticism she quite clearly does not agree with, and she's basically been my choice to win since the 'peace rolls'.

Both Kimberley and Ruby are obviously highly intelligent and apparently that's a problem for the part of Twitter that can't spell or punctuate, much less see a thought through to its conclusion?

I think Ruby seems fine - don't really get the problem. She is clearly way messier than the other contestants which leads me to think that her panicking & lack of assuredness isn't completely put on for the cameras.

Really can't stand Kimberley though! I don't think it's smugness exactly, my problem with her is that she always talks to the camera in a teacherly way when they cut to her, as though I'm watching GBBO in order to learn how to bake from her. She just seems to be preparing herself for her own baking programme, which feels more than a little presumptuous. She's clearly very talented though.

In the same interview Ruby says she's only been cooking for two years, she also says she's only been cooking since last summer and only really started during the last series of GBBO.

http://london.tab.co.uk/2013/10/02/mary-berry-goes-clubbing-the-tab-talks-to-ruby-tandoh/

They can't both be true, surely? Also, if we look at the application form for this series - which opens when the series ended and closed on 31 Jan, or about 6 months after "last summer" - it seems very, very unlikely that version of events is true.

http://thegreatbritishbakeoff.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/GBBO4-Application-Cover-letter.doc

Or, rather, if true then she was picked pretty much on her photo as the personality she's shown getting downselected from thousands on the basis of a telephone interview seems implausible in the extreme.

lol at people getting butthurt at a messy bake winning when P&M are always going on about how the flavour is the thing.

I don't find Kimberley's manner to be teacherly at all. She clearly knows what she's doing and elucidates well when asked. I'm not gonna start hating on someone because of their elequence.

eh that interview isn't that inconsistent, learning how to bake 2 years ago and then starting properly baking 1 year ago seems plausible.

she clearly has lots of talent and deserves to be there, speculation as to whether the people at the BBC chose her partly based on her attractiveness is totally redundant, she is a better baker than many of the less photogenic contestants who also got selected.

xpost fair enough - I'm not mad at her being eloquent, it just struck me that she is the only one who says stuff like 'you want to do X because Y' on the reg.

No, she says she started to bake a couple of years ago, then says she only stated to bake last year, then says she only started to look into baking properly during the last series. There's a further interview where she says she didn't start baking until the series was on, and only started to learn about in once she'd been selected:

http://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/10738926.Great_British_Bake_Off_s_Ruby_Tandoh_denies_rumours_of_TV_romance/

Now if you look at the application, how could you fill it in if you didn't know many baking techniques, as is claimed in that piece?

I'm not disputing she has ability, but to get through because "we can't forget how good she's been all series" when in week 1 she was crap at everything including serving hideous curdled custard is disingenuity on the part of the BBC. I think the series has been scripted to show her "journey" to winning, but because it was all filmed months ago they've had to push harder the 'truth' of what happened. The media barrage on behalf of her over the past week or so - are there even any other contestants, because they're not mentioned anywhere in the press - is ridiculous.

Has the media barrage not been solely down to people being awful cunts to her on twitter? (genuine question)

No, the majority of it has been denials of an affair between her and Paul from both parties. Most paper articles have barely touched on twitter other than mentioning it, although they're as likely to mention Ruby's twitter attacks on people who criticise her as anything. Liz Jones in The Mail thinks this makes her like Rihanna and loves her because she's the antitode to "third wave feminists" on tv. The Telegraph are behind her because she's a bit like Andy Murray, or the England football team. I even read one from mid-series that says she should win because she wears vintage clothing and has a nice cardigan.

Where did the accusations of an affair stem from?

There has been muttering that she's been given special favours in getting through for some unspoken reason. It does seem like an odd step for both parties to give a number of interviews denying it (especially Paul H, who did the same over his US co-host. The same one he did not contest the divorce from his wife over after she accused him of shagging her) if there's no truth in it whatsoever. But then Lex (for example) has seen no closeness or flirting or whatever between them all series.

She's had interviews and whatnot over the past week though - such as being invited to the 'pop-up baking week' launch (the others, if they were invited, managed not to be covered at it) or interviewed at home.

omg she is such a saggitarius

this programme and thread used to be about baking competitions

also, as someone watching for the first time, none of the results have been a shock at any stage of the competition, except perhaps christine going out before beca - in fact i get the impression the producers have had to work quite hard to hide the obviousness of each elimination

harsh on beca tbh

couldnt quibble about any of the eliminations this year too much- on the day.

Like I say, I think it's an available reading, but I might just as well point to her couching it in Kennedy-assassination language - she might easily be saying she thinks those points of view are crazy.

xpost I agree with the Lex.

nothing like the level of last year's winner even sharing a kitchen with the two other finalists, for instance.

yeah actually looking back i'd forgotten that beca did well with her focaccia - christine came last in the technical and both their vegetable cakes looked good/tasted bland (though i thought christine would've been ahead there for making her own fondant)

earlier in the series i felt sorry for beca because the judges just didn't seem to like her traditional welsh stuff much, but she never really pulled anything 100% amazing out of the bag - christine obviously made some excellent things but i did feel she had a very safety-first traditional recipe approach to what she made

beca's recipes were among the best for home baking though - my bf's been baking along and has chosen her stuff 3-4 times with superb results (albeit embarking on eg kimberley's filo pie would require about a day and military planning)

also w/r/t the ~controversial vegetable cake episode, with ruby's lopsided shed, my bf also pointed out that she showcased far more techniques than the others, who just baked a cake and slathered fondant over it to decorate (pre-bought in beca and kimberley's cases) - ruby baked the cake, did chocolate work and the caramel roof

more xpost

Having said that it seems obvious to me that the programme makers sculpt storylines through the series, and no doubt are selective about footage chosen to reflect the stories / behaviours they want you to perceive. It's a bit like making wildlife programmes, where footage will be cut into non-chronological order to give the impression of a particular narrative.

I don't have a problem with that, to be honest, it's done like that to make it more entertaining. In some respects it's more like WWF than it is like tennis or cycling... I don't feel like I've seen cleverly seen through some devilish fix, I just accept the thing for what it is.

(I'm being unfair, on reflection, I think it's more of an actual competition than the wrestling.)

Ruby gets the 123 after attacking Kimberley with the steel chair.Guest referee Michel Roux.

This being Lex's first series might be the key here. Compared to the others this has just felt like the X Factor or even Big Brother. The winner will be the one who's had the best 'journey' and will sell the most records (or books, cupcake tins, spatulas...) - although in this case the public don't even get to vote. I guess that's why idgaf about the twitter "outrage" - it's just the same as the noise that goes OMG HARY STYLES HE IZ SO FIT !!!!,!, and can just be ignored in the same way. Although as Danny says her her blog, there was as much negative stuff on twitter etc last year so why Ruby is getting such overt protection, or why even it's a press story is a puzzle.

Danny's blog explains a lot about some of Lex's other points too - if I had to submit weeks in advance what I was going to cook knowing I'd be unprepared in any case whether I rehearsed or not, and that the producers at a whim might cut the cooking time taking my submission impossible then I'd play it safe 90% of the time too.

It does make you wonder quite how students can afford to take part though.

one in the eye for the conspiracy theorists last night, eh? no one saw that coming - and the performances were such that i think they could easily have justified giving it to any of the three. bit annoying for me given that i was team kimberley OR ruby. wedding cake showstopper was only ever going to be frances's territory though - thought ruby might have done enough with her amazing pie but her wedding cake was pretty bad. she did as well as she could though, it's kimberley who really fucked up - she said in that telegraph interview that she had 3 essays to hand in during the week of the final and it showed, her ideas were amazing but it was obvious she hadn't fully practised them.

ruby can be very proud of http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/22/great-british-bake-off-ruby-dandoh though. preach, girl. she's written that, she's been openly critical of the misogyny of the mail and raymond blanc on twitter, she's baked some amazing things - and people still dislike her because she's a bit negative? fuck em. negative and self-deprecating is a legitimate personality to have in this world.

frances's website has looked like a professional career one since the start of the series which could've been a clue - she certainly has a niche that she can parlay into a career, can't imagine a book won't be forthcoming. ruby probably has a ton of opportunities if she chooses to take them up now - she said she wants to be a food writer. really hope we haven't seen the last of kimberley.

don't know how long ago this thing was wrapped up but in the "what are they doing now" bit no-one was indicating a move to professional baking, everyone sounded relieved the damn thing was over.

well, any moves to professional baking would only start now it's been broadcast!

Ah, a lot of them weren't exactly saying they weren't, though. "ruby gave up baking for 72 hours" or something like that.

We called the winner in our house before the pretzels. But, you know, good luck to them.

I see the DM has pic of Ruby on the front page as 'lost, but hey you're gonna be famous' oh the confliction there..

Ruby reminds me of my friend T, a chef/writer who chose being a relatively happy cook as her career over being a relatively miserable academic.

That seems like a very sensible life choice.

tbh, the ruby thing has passed me by ito what's being said/printed over there, but man oh man when she handed up that rubbish wedding cake last night and it got criticised, her sulky 'IT'S JUST LEMON' before they got the the third slice killed me. claim all you like that everyone has behaved like that throughout and been edited out. seems a strange line to take imo.

kimberley best baker throughout but once they criticised her cake on appearance (tbh, it just looked like a wedding cake, and was painstakingly put together inside, so not sure how valid this was) it was p obvious they were going with the 'shock' reveal....again.

won't bother with this next year.

i thought kimberley ran out of time to decorate the outside of her wedding cake as she intended, it looked adequate but not much more. did think that since her flavours worked they might prioritise taste again - possibly if her pie hadn't been such a flop they would have. nothing frances made last night was terrible so she obviously won on consistency...

yeah agreed...but i'd have thought kimberley's tech challenge had given her daylight again

the second/half second where paul picked up frances' already kinda lopsided cake and i thought it was gonna go.....

her sulky 'IT'S JUST LEMON' before they got the the third slice killed me

I was hooting at the telly during this. I haven't seen a second of the series or read anything about it, the entire Ruby argument has therefore passed me by and I spent the whole programme going "WTF, you're in THE FINAL, why can't you flip a cooling tray over without going oops my arms have got all twisted how does this work?", "you're in the THE FINAL why don't you know how long it takes to bake a cake, oh wait, you do" etc. That "IT'S JUST LEMON" near had me on the floor.

The wedding cake criticisms were odd. Kimberley's looked a wedding cake, albeit one with a wet newspaper on it. Mary's criticism of Frances' for not being decorated all the way round - the whole point of a wedding cake is to sit there and look pretty and be photographed, usually just from the front.

I didn't notice any flirting.

yeah agreed...but i'd have thought kimberley's tech challenge had given her daylight again

yeah i said this but the bf was just like, it's the final, who cares about the technical, it's all about the showstopper

the fix-minded crowd should really be noting how much the showstopper choice favoured frances in that case - ruby was never ever ever going to make a professional-looking wedding cake and kimberley was on the record as saying cake decoration wasn't her forte

I LOVE RUBY'S NEGATIVITY THO, I AM EXACTLY LIKE THAT

and yeah - if i wanted a wedding/occasion cake for show, i'd want frances to make it; if i wanted a delicious and innovative meal in a restaurant i'd want kimberley to make it; and if i wanted something that just tasted amazing without needing to look good, i'd want ruby to make it

I thought IT'S JUST LEMON was demoralised, not sulky. Unless one should be demoralised with better grace.

Kimberley consistently made the stuff I most wanted to eat, and seemed to fuck stuff up way less than the other two.

btw, i watched a few clips of the american version on youtube - it's nowhere near as bad as we've been led to expect, bar the weirdness of some contestants being all american and "YEAH! GONNA KILL IT! GONNA GET STAR BAKER THIS WEEK!" and the unfortunate end result (arrogant dick won when housewife, having aced her signature/technical in the final, totally choked and started crying about her dead dad midway through her showstopper)

american desserts make my teeth hurt though

xp it literally pains me that i'll never get to eat kimberley's filo pie as made by her, though the bf does intend to recreate it which is almost as amazing (totally gonna enter on his behalf next year)

Ruby summed up her entire series during the pie round last night:

Ruby: "Oh no! Oh no!" <looks like she's going to cry>
Mel: "What is it? What's wrong?"
Ruby: "Nothing... actually, it's really good."

The recap of the last series that they showed beforehand actually buoyed the conspiracy to a degree - I had forgotten that last year Danny was sent home purely because of the technical challenge in the semi-final, when she just didn't get it right and "other performances don't count at this stage". Not only that, her other items in the semi weren't considered because you shouldn't get it that wrong at that stage. Yet a year later...

The main other thing I noted was that Hollywood picks on a talented baker and puts them down from the start - it was notable this year that he first said "style over substance" in week 2 this year and never let it go even when the other words coming out of his mouth contradicted that, but had forgotten that from week 1 last year he tagged Brendan as "70s baker" and brought it up every week even when it wasn't true. Also that last year was actually as little about baking as Danny notes on her blog - wellingtons are not only not baking, they're specifically excluded by the 2013 application form!

Last night Kimberley's pie and Ruby's cake were probably what did for them and were equally as bad. Frances' pie and pretzels maybe only marginally behind Ruby's both times. I thought the weirdest thing was Mary's criticism of Frances' decoration - has she never seen a modern wedding cake before? They're pretty much all just decorated in one segment, at least partially because quite often the table will be against a wall for space reasons or a window for photography reasons.

In termas of what they're doing next, Frances has already said she's not interested in doing a bakery book as the market is saturated - what she wants to do is a book of her artwork and prelim designs for the series, which presumably the Beeb don't own. As the voiceover ominously said during the show, "If you want to make Frances' cake, the recipe is in the official book launched next month."

Ultimately I'd say Ruby paid the price for trying to play it safe with her very last cake - it was three victoria sponges, two of which were filled with a curd.

Oh, another thing I noticed was Ruby's mum not sticking to the script - Ruby either started baking last summer, or a couple of years ago once she was at university. Except according to her mum she used to bake at home, with her pointing out how messy the kitchen used to get (and this must have been before she was at university, because at the start of the interview she said how nice it was to have Ruby at home for the first time in years).

Actually, in the previous show Paul made very strong comments about messy bakers and how they can never survive in the contest. Ruby looked like an explosion in a flour factory for at least the first 5 weeks.

Well, shows what he knows then!

the "style over substance" narrative is interesting in that the audience picked up on it before the judges, but got over it before the judges. frances's narrative seems to have been:

i) dark horse contender, little focus but can't fail to notice design talent
ii) audience gets annoyed by tweeness and whimsy - she was no one's favourite a few weeks in
iii) judges pick up on style-over-substance, audience reacts "IKR!!!"
iv) judges start to hammer home style-over-substance a bit too much and eventually frances cries - audience sympathy ensues (in conjunction with growing ruby/kimberley hostility)
v) frances starts concentrating on flavours, it becomes apparent she's at the very least the Most Improved of the competition
vi) frances wins and confounds basically everyone

dunno why anyone cares exactly when ruby started baking, i don't think it's something that has a specific start date or that has a script, but she's only just started her second year of uni so that fits in with the vague "couple of years". regardless, she's obviously a good deal less experienced than anyone else in the show

??? You're seriously saying the audience were noting "style over substance" in week 1? Paul says it in week 2 and repeats it thereafter.

I care when Ruby started baking because it changes all the time, sometimes during the same interview, and from out of her own mouth. The inconsistency makes it sound fake, don't you think? And she hasn't just started her second year, she's finished uni. It said in the 'since the competition' bit at the end that she got a First.

:) I love that whether it's the Dr Who thread or the GBBO thread, I can turn to Aldo for chapter and verse on the consistency of the fictional universe.

the audience started noticing "style over substance" in week 2/3, the judges picked up on it in week 4 - see bullet point 3: http://monkseal.wordpress.com/2013/09/10/the-great-british-bake-off-4-episode-4-pies-and-tarts/

ruby got a first in her first year exams. it's been known she's just starting her second year for a while now.

The inconsistency makes it sound fake, don't you think?

this is completely mental, even i as a non-cook know that the date one starts to bake isn't a definite thing. you presumably muck about in the kitchen, you make a few simple cakes, and maybe years after that you begin taking it seriously as a hobby and learning non-basic techniques.

This is all mental, though it goes to prove how the focus of the show has shifted from cool bake stuff to reality tv in a year.

Danny-from-last-year's blog post upthread suggests it was much the same in 2012, I think.

Paul mentions style over substance in week 2, I'm trying to find the ref for it but I read it on Monday (unsurprisingly, searches are all just dominated with stories about the final).

Wait, being a first year student is even less consistent with any version of reality she's spoken. Firstly, she claims to have started baking when she went to university 'a couple of years ago'. Confusing 1 with >1 is pretty unlikely, no? Although this ties up if she only started baking last summer. The rest of that quote is then that she hadn't even heard of GBBO until the show was on, which means she didn't start baking until October 2012 maybe. This gives her a 4 month window to do enough baking, having no real background in it, to fill in the application (which I linked above) and if you look at Danny's blog (which you linked) to she pretty much states you can't lie on. And to be known as "the girl who leaves cake around the university", which presumably was what she put in the "what do other people think of your baking" box on the sheet.

you presumably muck about in the kitchen, you make a few simple cakes, and maybe years after that you begin taking it seriously as a hobby and learning non-basic techniques.

This is kind of the whole point, she says that isn't the case. She says she just took it up and has been this good since she started - bearing in mind the series finished filming 8 months after she allegedly started. Also she said she only started work on her "non-basic techniques" after being selected for the show.

I thought you were supposed to be the King of Research Lex!

Keep in mind the TV timelines; Ruby might have been just starting second year uni when she entered, and have finished her degree by this summer. That seems entirely reasonable given how long these things take to put together.

oh my god i literally don't care about the EXACT TIMELINE of ruby's baking career, i assume it was piecemeal and non-specific as is the natural way of these things and hardly indicative of...idk, whatever you're implying

i assume iplayer will give the answer as to when the phrase "style over substance" was first uttered but i definitely remember thinking "oh FINALLY the judges noticed too" in week 4

also can we return to how bloody good ruby's guardian piece was

I missed this thread, and haven't seen last night's final yet, so will read through this later. But I love this show, and I think this has been the best series. It's just so... gentle, compared to the other cookery competitions, and thankfully the producers seem averse to placing NARRATIVE all over it or letting us know too much about the bakers' personal lives at the expense of, you know, the baking. And even Paul Hollywood, whose stern and misplaced machismo I used to hate, has become something of a joy, mocking his own persona and just enjoying the japes with his co-hosts.

the Union Jack bunting and the way its been marketed have left me feeling a little uncomfortable, but the series itself has been golden, great television. I wanted Kimberley to win, as she seemed the best baker and had a great attitude throught (especially considering Beca's permanent state of sulk if she didn't get a glowing report from Mary and Paul).

Paul's english muffin recipe, btw, is excellent, I highly recommend it.

Everyone bringing their own projection to this tbh. Ruby deserved to be in the final and was an annoying sulk onscreen is about all we'll get close to agreeing at this stage. I realise this requires compromise on both sides but such is diplomacy.

junior bakeoff starts soon. Rumours of illicit affairs at that stage will be rather more tawdry.

Well it is on the BBC.

there it is

What the actual fucking fuck?

http://paulhollywood.kililive.com/

£34!

I'm also trying to imagine who would wear one of his FGTH t-shirts.

Ruby's disdain for weddings "an exercise in narcissism" was hilarious.

I'm also trying to imagine who would wear one of his FGTH t-shirts.

pretty sure my mum's gonna buy me one for xmas

all of you are insane

insane in the frangipane