Controversy in The Great British Bake Off

The Great British Bake Off is no stranger to controversy – every year, without fail, fans take to Twitter in their hoards to rant about the huge injustice which seems to plague the show continually. As a nation, I don’t think we will ever truly recover from “Bingate”, the theft of Howard’s custard, or the travesty of shop-bought fondant, amongst a myriad of other scandals. This year, precautions were taken to avoid further controversy, with the confiscation of judge Prue Leith’s phone prior to the broadcast of the series finale, so that she would be unable to accidentally reveal the winner, as she did last year. In spite of this, controversy hounded the Bake Off final, sending fans into a crisis which verged on the existential as they were forced to confront the ultimate question: “what is baking?”

Rahul Mandal was crowned the winner of Bake Off’s ninth season, beating Kim-Joy Hewlett and Ruby Bhogal to the coveted title, but his triumph was not without its controversy. Rahul was a consistent favourite throughout the competition, both amongst fans, and the show’s judges, and was named “star baker” on two occasions. In comparison to his previous bakes, his performance in the tent on 30^th October was a little underwhelming. Then again, seeing as neither the signature, nor the technical challenges required an oven, he didn’t actually do any real baking until it came to the showstopper, where contestants were asked to make a “landscape dessert”. This was where the true controversy began.

If Rahul’s jar was exploded on purpose to cast some drama into the final challenge, then it only succeeded in making fan’s question the show’s health and safety policy

Bake Off has always been pre-recorded, and therefore, whilst the final was shown in October, it was filmed at the peak of the sweltering summer, making conditions in the tent unbearable. Mere moments after the showstopper challenge began, one of Rahul’s glass storage jars exploded, a testament to how hot it must have been in that tent. The initial outrage questioned whether the bakers should have been permitted to work in such conditions; we’ve seen heat cause problems in the contest in the past, but we’ve never seen a jar explode with quite such ferocity. Was it really safe for Rahul and his fellow finalists to be rushing to complete bakes when it was clearly far too hot to be outside? Perhaps the final could have been postponed, or maybe they could have filmed it in a different location. One of the challenges involved making pitta breads on an open fire anyway, so why couldn’t they just ditch the tent altogether for the last week?

Following on from the explosion, Rahul’s entire bake had to be thrown away, admittedly he had only been baking for about ten minutes, but it was as if he’d been asked to bin his bake moments before presentation (again I reference Iain’s infamous baked Alaska). Understandably, he was upset, and the whole incident clearly knocked his confidence a little, but the way his reaction was presented to the audience seemed over the top. No doubt, if he had lost, he would have blamed his defeat not on his sub-par doughnuts, but on the fact that he had to start again five minutes into the final challenge. We see this happen all the time; bakes don’t go according to plan and are abandoned swiftly, with no overall impact on the contestant’s performance. Eventually, after a tense few minutes in which Paul Hollywood implausibly feared for Rahul’s chances, he was granted an extra fifteen minutes to complete the challenge. Admittedly, Rahul’s landscape was the stand-out of the three, and he was a worthy winner, but even if he had served up his showstopper without the unappealing sludge pond, he still would have taken the title.

Was the outcome fixed? Who knows. If Rahul’s jar was exploded on purpose to cast some drama into the final challenge, then it only succeeded in making fan’s question the show’s health and safety policy. No doubt the next series will hold another slew of controversies, and we will lap them up eagerly. Let’s be honest, we love a bit of drama, and Bake Off wouldn’t be Bake Off without a scandalous rumour or two.