Suzanne Harrington: The perfect recipe to get Boris off my TV

My telly is a lonely thing, dusty and neglected, an inanimate Miss Havisham abandoned on a shelf; I’d anticipated the next time I would hit the on button would be for season three of HBO’s Succession, which hasn’t even started filming yet because of the plague.

I’d forgotten all about the Great British Bake Off, my annual dip into pleasurable jelly-telly. 2020 had wiped it from my brain, along with lots of other positives like faith in Western democracy, belief in the innate intelligence of humans, and hope that we could co-operate together collectively so that we don’t all go extinct before season three of Succession. Which is how I find myself sitting, tea and biscuits to hand, awaiting the opening Bake Off credits with the kind of joyful anticipation normally reserved for sex and birthdays.

Except the screen is filled instead with the flabby floppy head of Boris Johnson, addressing Britain’s Bake Off viewers about his government’s latest brilliant responses to the plague. To summarise: we are not allowed to gather in groups of more than six, unless we plan on murdering wild birds, in which case — literally —  fire away. (So, kids, if you want to organise an outdoor rave, just turn up in tweeds carrying a shotgun — they can’t touch you. Acieeeeed!) 

And let’s not question the logic of seven children not being allowed to feed the ducks together, but 30 men being allowed to shoot them out of the sky. (The ducks. They haven’t legalised shooting children — yet).

If you go to the pub, you’ll have to leave at 10pm, because the pub is safe until 9.59pm, but at 10.01pm it’s a swamp of infection, as the virus has learned to tell the time and bought itself a wrist watch. It will also enter restaurants at 10.01pm, despite the UK government paying us to eat out for the past few weeks in its super-spreader initiative, Eat Out To Help Out. Pizza with a side order of plague. Still, our fault for liking pizza, eh Bozza?

Going back to work has changed to working from home, unless yours is the kind of zero hours contract service industry job on which the rest of us depend, but for which you will receive little recompense, and be blamed if you are stupid enough to catch the virus at work while trying to earn money to feed your family. Whatever happens, it’s will be your fault.

And so the profound comfort of watching twelve amateur bakers in a tent in Teletubbyland. The horror —  bubble gum flavoured Battenburg! inch thick blue marzipan!  — and the fear — cakes dropped to the floor! cream melting on hot sponge! —  has never felt so soothing. 

The only drama being too much sugar syrup or not enough. I’d like to move into the Great British Bake Off tent, and stay there until someone tweedy mistakes Boris Johnson for an enormous greedy grouse, flapping in our faces, squawking useless nonsense. I’d bake him in a pie, feed him to the dogs.