The ‘Great British Bake Off’ will never be the same. But that’s not a bad thing

LONDON Don’t get me wrong, I love Mary Berry.

She’s got an awesome sense of humour. She’s kind and encouraging, but firm when she needs to be. She exudes the kind of serene wisdom normally reserved for those rare teachers you actually looked up to when you were in school. Basically, she’s the Dumbledore of the baking world.

But she isn’t the true heart of Bake Off.

For a lot of people, Thursday morning’s grim news that Berry wouldn’t be following the Great British Bake Off to its new Channel 4 home was the final straw.

What with the change of channels, the loss of Mel and Sue and now the abrupt departure of half of the judging team, many people seem to think the original show has been completely gutted.

Even Sam Claflin, of Hunger Games fame, was upset by the news.

Personally, though, I think Bake Off will be just fine.

Although the BBC logo, Mel and Sue’s barrage of innuendos and Mary Berry’s twinkling blue eyes are all an undeniably huge part of the show’s canon, they’re really just the icing on what is already a pretty glorious cake.

The real heart of the show the thing that pulls you in early on each season and keeps the tension high as the weeks pass is the bakers themselves.

The true stars of Bake Off.

As with any TV programme that involves watching members of the public, the whole thing is only as interesting as the people on the show.

The contestants on Bake Off are no exception to this. Although the post-episode conversation on social media does occasionally involve Mary or Paul, what tends to drum up the most chatter is the various bakers and their creations.

Here’s a small sample of tweets about the current season so far:

Not all tweets about Bake Off are like this, but plenty of them do follow a similar pattern: they focus on the show’s contestants.

In fact, let’s zone in on that last tweet for a moment. Let’s talk about Val.

A retired headmistress with a fondness for talking to her cakes, Val Stones is the perfect eccentric example of what makes the Great British Bake Off great. By the end of her run on Bake Off, Val could pretty much have started her own show and people would have watched it.

She made people laugh, she made people tweet, and with her final, surprisingly emotional parting speech she made people cry.

“When you bake, you always bake for a reason,” said Val at the episode’s conclusion. “And you’re giving it to people, so you make it the best you can. And you make it with love.

“And whenever I make anything, I stir love into it. I knead love into it.

So when I present it, it’s special.”

You can’t write that kind of gold.

To give you a sense of how emotionally invested everyone was in Val (and bear in mind she’s only one out of 10 competitors), here are just a few of the tweets about her parting speech.

This happens every year, too. Each and every season of Bake Off, the one-liners, triumphs, downfalls and quirks of the competing bakers are the focus of a giant online conversation.

Last year, Paul Jagger’s bread lion was so impressive it practically became a meme. The eventual winner of the 2015 season, Nadiya Hussain, was so popular by the season’s conclusion that she was inspiring fan art.

As long as Channel 4 can keep up the show’s tradition of finding contestants that get the public talking and, let’s be honest, they’ve got form on this; just look at the success of Come Dine With Me the show will remain a success.

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