The Great Celebrity Bake Off assessment: Jodie Whittaker gives a showstopping performance in more ways than one

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The Great Celebrity Bake Off for Stand Up to Cancer is again, and whereas there may be a lot that’s acquainted – unhealthily giant lumps of butter, home made jam, weak jokes – there are some vital modifications. Out like a soggy digestive goes Matt Lucas, and in comes new ingredient Alison Hammond, a pretty choux bun of a presenter, and the nicest Brummie on the telly (not a crowded subject when you think about the remainder are largely Peaky Blinders).

She’s not fairly as fruity as Lucas – who’s? – however her larger-than-life persona comes in helpful now that it’s teamed up with Noel Fielding, who appears to be deflating into a worryingly pale, smaller-than-life persona quicker than an undercooked soufflé. I don’t prefer to be private, actually I don’t, however his vampiric presence on the present is pretty off-putting lately. And, in line with studies, this will probably be Prue Leith’s final season on the celeb spinoff, with Nigella Lawson rumoured to be the very acceptable substitute. She would possibly feed Fielding up a bit. The sardonic Paul Hollywood can also be current, as ever, and sprinkles his distinctive umami high quality to proceedings.

It may be my fading reminiscence however they appear to have rejigged issues a bit this yr, and so the present doesn’t proceed fairly as stodgily by means of all of the contestants, substances and cookery ideas because it used to. Watching folks make truffles stays inherently boring however the modifying is snappier and, at the very least so far as the primary episode is anxious, the celebs are livelier than normal, too. Jodie Whittaker endures with good grace the countless bantz about Doctor Who, her most celebrated position, and smiles bravely when suggested to not confuse her sonic screwdriver together with her whisk.

She proves to be a worthy runner-up baker, based mostly on creations with a sense of event and a vivid creativeness. Her showstopper consists of a large custard cream that really tastes nearly as good as those you should buy in the outlets, in line with Paul, with the ageless options of the judges picked out with ice rings, melted glacier mints and jam. These treats enchantment to the judges, as do her sunny cake pops. At any charge, she and the solid and crew survive Bake Off’s first severe industrial accident, when the glass bowl in Whittaker’s meals processor decides to enter orbit like a Sontaran spaceship and smashes into the ground. That actually is a showstopper.

But not sufficient of one to thwart Spencer Matthews (Made in Chelsea, and now certainly a little bit of a Chelsea Bun), who excelled himself together with his Jekyll and Hyde avant-garde “dodgy jam” portraits of Leith and Hollywood, properly mixed with the Stand Up to Cancer arrow emblem; right here is a baker who’s additionally a painter. It is when he reveals – with comprehensible smugness – that the jam for the filling in his large biccies is home-made, that we actually get the intestine feeling he most certainly will win. As the judges say, Spencer appears to enhance by means of the challenges, and makes the hassle. He constantly applies a sense of stability to his cooking – chopping by means of sickly sweetness with a squeeze of a lemon for his crimson velvet cake pops. If life as a skilled celeb ever palls, he would possibly take into account changing into a TV pastry chef .

The low level, other than the Time Lord’s flying mixing dish, is the cake lollipops designed by singer Paloma Faith. These are impressed, if that’s the phrase, by the poo emoji, and her children love them. Crafted by hand with cocoa and caramel, with a nausea-inducing realism, they go down effectively with the judges, and Hollywood notably enjoys their grainy texture. Makes you marvel…

Fielding turns a bit scatological as he observes Faith forcing the brown stuff out of her piping bag like a badly constipated labrador. As I say, a haunting and unappetising scene, and essentially the most disturbing since Russell Brand created a biscuit diorama tribute to his missus’s ladyparts.

Even with a format as completely well-baked as Bake Off, protecting it so contemporary is a exceptional achievement. The current flawed revivals of Big Brother, Survivor and even Wheel of Fortune remind us how tough it’s to maintain a “franchise” throughout the years, altering presenters and shifting across the channels; however Channel 4 has proved to be the perfect oven in which GBBO can rise. The subsequent episode will function actor Danny Dyer, comedians Rhod Gilbert and Leigh Francis (aka Keith Lemon), and presenter Yinka Bokinni, a extremely palatable combine, and I’m notably trying ahead to simply how a lot obscenity Francis/Lemon can pump into a cream bun.

Funnily sufficient, Bake Off was first aired on the BBC again in 2010, and so it’s the similar age because the Conservative authorities. Sorry, however I can’t keep away from the plain level that Bake Off hasn’t but gone all racist, mouldy, or stale. Let’s be thankful for that.