Suzanne Harrington: Time to park our horror... let's focus on Bake Off

(Left to right) Paul Hollywood, Alison Hammond, Nigella Lawson, and Noel Fielding will be on our screens each Tuesday night for the next two months. Picture: Channel 4 

It's that time of year again. 

That glorious moment when we get to briefly park our rage and horror at the wars, the livestreamed genocide, the burning of our beautiful planet, the psychopath warmongers, the billionaire vampires, the robots being designed to kill us all if everything else doesn’t finish us off first.

Time to park all of that and, for a short, sweet moment, focus instead on what is served up to us, year after comforting year, from a big white tent in the Teletubby gardens of a stately home. 

A place of peace, love, and cake, where everyone is kind and funny and, frankly, a bit nerdy. Where people whisk with intent, squint anxiously through oven doors, pipe with surgical precision, and occasionally drop things, all punctuated by moments of hugging, laughing, and crying. 

An epically unifying and soothing annual event, where we can retreat to focus with laser fixation on all the wonderful ways to combine sugar, flour, and fat. Where nothing else matters.

Bake Off has outdone itself this year. All of society is in that tent. The drag artist who is part of a throuple — my spellcheck doesn’t recognise the term but Bake Off does. The wheelchair user with the beautiful hair. 

The cute Yorkshire lad who describes himself as a “northern diva”. The they/them vegan who said “indeedaroonie” like a sugar-rushing Ned Flanders. The old guy who discovered later in life that he has a flair for baking; the three young guys who discovered theirs early. 

The two middle-aged ladies who can do magic with crème diplomat, chiffon sponge, and other kitchen mysteries. The one with the startling eyes, brighter and bluer than Paul Hollywood’s, who went home sick.

They are all there, a Faragean worst nightmare of races, ethnicities, genders, and sexualities, beautifully blended and earnestly united inside that magic tent by the anxiety that their cakes won’t rise.

Who knew a baking competition could wield such soft power, representing the kind of society that most of us want to continue living in? Everyday utopia, with mirror glaze and Italian meringue. 

An annual event untarnished by sex criminals, unblemished by scandal — unless you count that one time in 2013 when a contestant accidentally used another contestant’s custard, or the following year when someone chucked their baked Alaska in the bin in a minor fit of pique.

Speaking of piquancy — see what I did there — you’ll have noticed how deliciously Nigella has been stirred into the mix. 

Just when we thought our annual soothe-fest couldn’t get any more unctuous, along comes the spoon-licker extraordinaire, with her husky tones and creamy poshness. 

A nation crowds around the telly, like the olden days — even the dads, keen for a glimpse of her spatula. Carry on baking.

For the next two months, our weeks will pivot on a Tuesday. We will banish thoughts of the apocalypse, the exhortations to stockpile food, the stream of airport “glitches” — is that Russian for cyberattack? — and the daily fuckery spewing forth from global superpowers. 

Instead, we will put the kettle on, crack open the ginger nuts, and sink deep into the bosom of Bake Off, where — unless you count your sugar shell cracking — nothing bad ever happens.