2016 GBBO Mini blog. Week 1

Cake week

Mel & Sue Sandwich: Reverend Lee; back to cooking demos in a church in Bolton - his ganache lacked panache, and Paul couldn't forgive him for oversizing his mirror glaze.  But the real loser here is me - I had Lee in the work sweepstake.  Farewell £24 winnings.

Lucky escape #1: Val, bless her – not the sharpest blade in the Magimix?  Seriously though, little sounds more revolting than a lemonade and liqueur drizzle cake.  

Lucky escape #2: PE teacher/lipstick fan Candice had a rubber-sponged shocker.  But we can’t lose Candice yet!  Not only is she part of a potential tent romance with Selasi (#salacioustotallymadeupgossip), but her post-cake drop exclamation of "MOTHER HUGGER!" was brilliant - clearly training adolescent girls to play hockey teaches you to suppress even the juiciest swears.

Lucky escape #3: At one point, I honestly thought we were heading for Freezergate Two.

Ma Baker: Jane beat out Redhead Andrew and Banker/Biker Selasi.  Even though he took the credit for Candice's idea to add forgotten cinnamon to his drizzle (we’ll put that down to his budding crush), I think Selasi could be the oxymoron that is a ‘likeable banker’…

Smut-watch: Who had Perkins during first five minutes? Good old Sue, proclaiming "ultimate moistness" at 20.03.  The (innocent) winner, though, was Nice Kate, she of the swallows obsession - "I like the flavour of a Cox".  Too much.

Blue plaster-watch: Rav. 8.06pm.

Unusual ingredient-watch: “Really, you’ve never heard of yuzu?” NO RAV, NO-ONE HAS.  A cross between lemon and lime apparently.  Perhaps that could have saved Tom's G&T drizzle cake - even too boozy for Bezza. (Whaaat?!)

Phrases you don’t hear for a year: “Gingham altar”

Is it just me or…: Have Mel & Sue have started to run out of links?

Über-geek observation: Benjamina's sister has the Kathryn zebra scarf in red.  AS DO I.

Next time: Gingerbread structure collapse week.

(* Or "MOTHER HUBBARD" as I originally heard...) 

2016 GBBO contestants

1. 25 year old Andrew is a Norn Iron Rolls-Royce aerospace engineer who went to Cambridge. Andrew is designing a baguette concorde. 

2. Benjamina is a 23 year old Economics grad and Sarf Londoner.  She follows online cake fashions, which I’d be wary of telling Mary, who must surely believe all bake knowledge can only come from a book. Her book. (Shove it, Delia.)

3. North London PE teacher Candice grew up in pubs, so Bezza will be right in there.  Candice has a pug called Dennis and bakes in jammies or new heels.

4. Beckenham woman Jane, 61, designs gardens for a living and owns a leopard print apron.  Macarons are her nemesis.

5. Kate, 37 (such a youthful age these days) is a Norfolk farmer’s daughter and qualified nurse, so the blue plasters will be safe in her hands.  She enjoys a seasonal fruit.

6. Builder turned pastor Lee is 67.  We’re told “he doesn’t veer too far from the norm but does enjoy a taste of the exotic every now and again”, so Norman mark two?  One can only hope. #lavendergate #stillhurts

7. Michael is a Durham Uni politics student who bakes cakes in his student house in the early hours of the morning.  Normal cakes, of course. Normal cakes baked at 2am.  Totally totally normal cakes.

8. Rav, 28, is from Erith and likes vegan baking.  I suspect Sue will spend minimal time at his station.

9. 30 year old Selasi is originally from Ghana.  He’s a biker with his own motorcycle club, but also enjoys a delicate cupcake.  Name me a biker who doesn't.

10. Tom, 26, works in the arts and resides in trendy East London – this helpfully explains why his hobby is 'making his own cheese and salami'.  He and his wife also “like to make a real event out of every dinner time”, which doesn’t make them sound unbearable at all, oh no.  He’s recently lost 30 kilos though, so here’s my grudging respect.

11. Louise, 46, recently trekked around the Andes.  She is a Welsh hairdresser, which bodes super well in terms of reality TV vintage (Big Brother Helen, Charleine off the Apprentice).

12. Retired primary Head Val says she can make the classics with her eyes closed, so will clearly butcher a vicky sponge in week one.  Apparently she can often be found doing aerobics in her kitchen whilst she waits for her jam to boil or her bread to prove.  In the tent of course, she'll find herself desperately staring at an oven, grapevines the furthest thing from her mind.

Great British Sewing Bee - 2016 - Week 1

Basic construction week

Another year, another trip to an impeccably cool London warehouse full of fabric and bobbins. Another fine-seeming bunch of contestants too, though no Buddhist prison chaplain #sadtimes 

New judge: May has been silently replaced with Edna Mode, AKA Esme Young, film costumer and designer for Cher (FOR CHER!).  May was a sweetheart, but I’ve already completely taken to Esme (SHE DRESSED CHER!).  She especially made her mark this week by talking arse; complimenting a particularly fine buttock-showcasing skirt, and making the model totes blush.

Sew long, farewell: Scottish Duncan (he of the Vanilla-Ice-and-then-some hairspray quiff) didn’t quite make the grade, so was first to leave the haberdashery – with the usual lonely walk and ceremonial switching off of the lights.  Tracey was the lucky survivor, which means her husband will definitely have to go to Tesco’s to get his own dinner next week – am sure he’ll survive.

The Pattern Task:  A top cut on the bias, which I think means ‘making things all diagonal-ish’.  It was all about matchy matchy lines – a problem for Ghislaine, who initially went for blurry blurry lines (obviously not in a Robin Thicke rapey way, of course).  Stay at home dad Jamie won out over science editor Charlotte - perhaps because she spent most of her time very sweetly helping footballer Josh.  Charlotte is probably my early favourite as she wants to replace her three children's bedrooms with the haberdashery and made pyjamas for them which listed their place in the family pecking order. #parentalrolemodel

The Alteration Task:  We’re used to May wow-ing in wonder at the alterations, but there’s a new attitude in town now - open disappointment at the mundane.  To be fair, it wasn’t super impressive to see pretty much every blue maternity smock turned into a skirt – no wonder Jamie made it two for two, with a slightly crazed de-constructed dress, even though - hushed tones - it looked a hot mess to me...

(Can I suggest a maternity clothes week though – there is *significant* scope for more preggers fashion.)

The Sew-stopper Task: Made to measure skirts – and a great selection, thanks very much.  Lots of swishy catwalk potential from the models, apart from the aforementioned bum-tastic pencil one.  I was expecting it to get the whit-whoo sexy background music, but I guess they must be saving that for bra and stockings week.

Garment Of The Week: The bum skirt, of course!  It was all about that bass, about that bass, no treble (etc).  So well done Northern Irish Angeline. 

RIP: The programme was dedicated to last year's finalist Lorna Monje (and, for the very very little it’s worth, so is this blog).  Lorna was a friend’s aunt and, for me, a Great British All-Time Favourite.  She was, by all accounts, a wonderful person – which was so evident from what we saw from her on the show.  Thanks for being such a warm, smart and funny piece of my TV life, Lorna.  Her family have set up a JustGiving page here.

The Great Pottery Throw Down - 2015 - Semi final

Thrown out: Lovely Jane, perhaps for making a chandelier out of china breast implants. We also saw Major Tom wobble big time though - no time or inclination for jokey man bantz with Jimbo this week, just lots and lots of pressure on himself.

Top pot: Three in a row for Matthew - the Kiln Gods were smiling on him again.  It's particularly exciting as it looks like he has a special bow-tie to wear under his tweed and tabard in the final.  Fancy.

Keith's tears: Were they absent this week? Special mention instead therefore to Kate's glasses, which were orange and excellent.  Oh and also to...

Keith's dungarees: I was most surprised to find myself suggesting to Mr Cad that he might think about investing in a pair of paint-splattered dungas.  Who'd have thought?

Main make: A bone-china chandelier, which looks an almighty stressful faff, though I enjoyed hearing the expert use a Cadbury's Creme Egg analogy to explain the fabrication process.  And they were all rather beautiful creations too, let's face it.

Spot test: Banding - those lines you get on plates. Yet another example of how I never really thought about how a standard and common feature on ceramics is actually reeeeeeally hard to carry out.

Throw down: Only throwing a blimmin' sphere! A SPHERE! Or a conehead, egg and, um, bowl in the case of some of our potters.

Vital potting implement of the week: Jim seemingly brings a guitar to the studio. 

Potted history: The recipe for bone china was refined by someone called Josiah Spode, which is more Dickensian than anything ever, including anything by Dickens.

Smut-watch: "Jim, would you mind cupping my jellyfish?"

Next week: The final! Jim to pip Matthew or Matthew all the way?  It's a tough call...

The Great Pottery Throw Down - 2015 - Week 4

Thrown out: Sandra – her casual relationship with deadlines finally got the better of her; it turns out that hanging around, chatting, and checking out Major Tom’s sweaty manframe, does not enable you to build a five foot clay garden structure in seven hours – indeed it forces you to hurriedly cut out a zigzag Teletubby tentacle to stick on the top (Dipsy’s apparently) in a desperate attempt to gain some cheaty height.  Judge Kate’s face was spectacularly unimpressed; a clay aerial is to Kate, what a baking raising agent is to Mary Berry.

Top of the pots: Matthew again – for being brilliant, mind.  His industrial ceramic structure was truly marvellous, and the worthy recipient of Keith’s tears.

Main make: The aforementioned five-foot garden sculpture, which provided immediate smut-watch, as Matthew brandished a tape measure and queried whether they didn’t mean five inches.

Spot test: Pimp My Chimney Pot.  Our potters had to turn chimney pots into strawberry pots, which have lots of holes in for the strawbs to poke through.  Cue more filth therefore, as this involved sticking appendages (snigger) over holes (snigger). Rockabilly Jim took a risk with some deliberately messy joining – thumbprints galore. It worked, as art at least – might be more problematic if the police were ever after him.

Throw down: Ten minutes to make the widest possible plate with “no sagging or flopping rims” - I mean...

Competition-watch: Matthew is probably deadlocked-head and shoulders above the rest, but Major Tom is all out for Rockabilly Jim – we've not seen this level of naked competitiveness on the Great British Televised Middle Class Pursuit since Kimberly Bake Off got hounded on Twitter.  The testosterone was buzzzing to the degree that Major Tom decided it was better to crazy sweaty from using his MAN strength to roll out his clay, rather than employing the specialist mangle thing the others went for. Next stop, a Tom v Jim Women In Love-style wrestle? In wet clay, obvs.

Smut-watch: It’s more a case of which bits weren’t the height of lewdness at his point. Move aside baking, pottery is way ruder.

The Great Pottery Throw Down - 2015 - Week 3

Thrown out: Sexy vet James – Judge Keith was really upset that one of his five vases wasn’t as matchy-matchy as the others.  But we also lost Joanna, who left for personal reasons.

Top of the pots: Dready Matthew - indeed Kate wanted to snaffle one of his vases under her floral blouse.  Matthew used a technique called “sgraffito” and confidently explained that the word was where “graffiti” came from - as it originated from cavemen scratching their names and cock and ball pics into walls (or something... I paraphrase).  He then suggested the BBC fact-check that one.

Main make: Ten long-necked ‘raku’ cases. Nothing to do with hot handed massages or the recent Eurovision host with the dodgy human rights record, but rather using a dramatic outdoor oven and FIRE IN A BIN to get amazing patterns and a cracked texture on the surface of your crockery.  The potters also had to use comedy tongs to take their creations from oven to bin (think those booth machines at the fairground where you manipulate a flimsy robot hand to pick up a cuddly toy until it inevitably drops back down at the last moment), before plunging their vases into water (think a pottery Russian banya).  In short, SO MUCH CRACK POTENTIAL!  Indeed Sandra had major trouble with her tongs, and dropped a vase on to the ground.  Heartbreaking.

Keith’s tears: Fortunately Sandra was rewarded for her emotional journey and her cracked vase trauma with Keith’s weeping - he cried at her “resolve” and her five lovely vases.

Middle class pottery implement of the week: Jane created her bin fire out of manure from her family farm.  Vet James did less well, bringing what looked like a pound shop water sprayer for the raku-ing.  It promptly broke.

Spot test: Slip decoration on jugs. To be honest, I didn’t really understand what that meant, by which I mean I totally tuned out during the technical explanation-y bit and then just looked at the preeeeety designs.

Throw down: Keith threw two candlesticks, then hid them, and the potters then had to copy them. This was far more tense and entertaining than you might think.

Smut-watch: “Jugs”.

The Great Pottery Throw Down - 2015 - Week 2

Thrown out: Smiling Nigel, after the bottom fell off his basin - making it fairly unusable. Who will Sara Cox flirt with now her "tangerine dream" has gone? At least Nigel went out in a blaze of TV glory, decorating a tile by printing his name on it repeatedly - in a blind judging task. 

Top of the pots: Rockabilly Jim - more on his offerings later, viewers. But it was Major Tom's washbasin which made Judge Keith so totes emosh, he shed a little tear. Keith's tears are the new Hollywood handshake. 

Main make: Seven days to make a washbasin - yeGads they were impressive and beautiful. Rockabilly Jim's golden turtle decor was especially fantastic. I thought I loved my sleek geometric plain white washbasin until now - might try painting some gold leaf animals on. Or see what texture I can create with some crusty toothpaste markings.

Spot test: Surface decor on the aforementioned tiles. There was a disappointing lack of sexualised moves in the potters' decorating actions. 

Throw down: Wheeling the tallest possible pot - BLINDFOLDED. Cue an enthusiastic Sara Cox, armed with innuendo and a tape measure. Turns out Matthew had the biggest one. 

Observations on the nosey home life bit: Major Tom's daughter is simultaneously aghast and thrilled that her brother admitted to not liking some of their dad's cups. Sandra's son appears to sport a feather in the back of his otherwise entirely conventional hairstyle. 

Smut-watch: Potting's not just cocks, ladies and gents! Gay vet (as in animals not old-timer) James thinks Jane's made a vagina-y bowl. Jane surmises that he's probably not seen too many examples. 

Middle class pottery implement of the week: Art teacher Matthew used his students' pottery stamps to decorate his basin (touching inspiration or child labour?), but Major Tom wins thanks to his porcupine's quill from Zimbabwe.