Tag Archives: Great British Bake Off

51842

The GBBO final proceeded according to form. Laura spilt more stuff while Peter and Dave slugged it out for top honours. I won’t say more as it is not the most interesting thing for me to discuss if you haven’t seen it. And also because I’m worried I must be getting old as it’s becoming more interesting as the years go by.

I may be telling people who already know, but if you fancy doing something educational the Open University has a range of free courses available. I’m doing the “What is Poetry?” course in an attempt to educate myself. I have been reading articles for the last few months but decided that it might be good to do a proper course. It’s OK, but not really telling me anything I didn’t know. I’ll probably try a couple of poetry courses but after that it’s time to try the one about critical reading – which is something I do need to know more about. After that there are so many courses offered by so many Universities that the choice it almost endless.

Apart from that there’s nothing much to report. Poor service from the Royal Mail, poor service regarding prescriptions, and a missing parcel which was sent via courier. All stuff I could do without, all stuff that will take time to sort. I really do have better uses for my time.

I sent an article off to a poetry magazine last night (I’m starting to branch out) and found that the on-line form system that it uses  will only accept Word files – it won’t accept files from Apache Open Office. I am on a month’s free trial with Word, so was able to convert it, but it’s a problem for the future. Having decided that I’m going to refuse to pay £80 as year for Microsoft Office I don’t really want to go back to it days after deciding on the alternative.

Life is never simple…

And the title? I forgot to add a title, so the next thing I saw was that two people had liked 51842. At that point I guessed I’d ben in such a hurry to write that I’d forgotten the title again.

 

Great British Bake Off and Other Thoughts

I’ve just been watching GBBO and shouting abuse at the TV screen. It’s amazing how worked up you can get about sponge cake.

After the change of channel following the last series I was prepared never to watch it again. I even thought I might not bother giving this series a chance. I didn’t really fancy Noel Fielding for the job because I think he’s a bit over the top, and I’ve never found Sandi Toksvig as entertaining as she seems to find herself. As she’s the same age as me and much more rich and famous it’s possible I’m in a minority here.

Having watched the series so far I have to say I can’t really tell the difference, despite the change of personnel. Despite my misgivings they seem to be doing a good job. Being a fan of light-hearted banter and cake this really is my sort of show.

One of the things that fascinates me, apart from the cake, is the careers that seem to open up for some of the bakers. Nadiya Hussein, the 2015 winner, seems to be popping up all over the place. She’s on TV, has a newspaper column, is an author and has been up for several awards. She’s even been a question on Pointless, and it doesn’t get much better than that.

Compared to the general run of TV “celebrities” she’s way ahead of most of them, as are all the GBBO winners.

It’s a tricky thing to judge, and I don’t have a clue how we’ve arrived a a situation where people can make a career from being stupid on TV. Despite my cluelessness it looks like we’re in for a long spell of exposure to people who went on Big Brother, TOWIE, Made in Chelsea and whatever other dross we seem to fall for.

I’m thinking of pitching an idea called Dancing on Thin Ice where a group of spurious celebrities is made to skate on a frozen lake as the spring thaw arrives. Depending on the audience phone-in results they will be given bricks to put in their pockets as the series progresses. It will be filmed on location in Russia, as they have the the ice, and the right sort of attitude to Health and Safety.

I’d better start rehearsing my speech for the award ceremony.