Ahead of the baking contest’s return on Tuesday, we look back at the highlights and controversies, from squirrel nuts to #CustardgateConsider the end times in which The Great
British Bake Off has risen like a derelict gingerbread barn from the ashes of a near showstopper disaster. (James Morton, adorable Scotsman, series three.) In the 10 years since a show about a disparate bunch of amateur bakers measuring out flour and whimsy in a countryside tent was commissioned by the
BBC, more not-great British stuff has happened than in many other peacetime decades combined.
Bake Off was born into a country reeling from its first hung parliament since the 1970s. It turns 10 as the
UK prepares to crash out of the EU without a deal. In between, lots of other nasty things have been stuffed, like an inedible victoria sandwich baked in hate. What I am really wondering, while being waylaid by extended cake metaphors in the grand tradition of #GBBO reportage, is whether The Great British Bake Off is all that is left of what’s great and British in this country?