Who Is The Guy With Makeup On Great British Baking Show
W e call her Bez or Bezzer most of the fourth dimension," Mel Giedroyc says looking across at Mary Drupe. "Or Mucky Mary," says Sue Perkins, "or Dirty Bezzer. Bezzer pretends to exist interested in what the bakers have made but the merely question on her listen actually is: 'Is at that place a flake of alcohol here that I can get my hands on? A chip of rum?'"
"Oh aye!" interjects Paul Hollywood, "Mary loves zip meliorate than taking all the bakers out for a drink and playing darts with them."
"Bez loves a game of darts," says Sue. "And then she'll get the glow sticks out well-nigh 2am."
Mary looks defeated, equally if she's lost control of three naughty toddlers. "Will yous please bear! Don't pay any attention to them, I've never played darts in my life!"
Nosotros are on the ready of The Great British Broil Off, which starts its 4th series side by side month. There is a lull in the punishing filming schedule – it takes ii 12-hour days to movie one episode, 10 weeks to moving-picture show a series – and Mary "Bez" Berry, Paul Hollywood and Mel and Sue are about to sit downwardly together on a couple of sofas in their dressing room and sentinel episode five of series two of Mad Men.
They regularly go their Mad Men fix all together, scurrying off to let the contestants sweat it over a rum baba cooking in the oven or a dough being proved. "Come on, Mary," I heard Sue say, rubbing her hands not with flour but glee, "Mad Men awaits."
They are like a family unit, they say, albeit a dysfunctional ane, according to Mel. "Nosotros bicker and nosotros tease and we laugh at ridiculous gags and make upwards stupid games."
Offscreen discord and power struggles betwixt Drupe and Hollywood over what constitutes a good nibble and a soggy bottom? You must be kidding. "I do always bow to Paul on bread," says Berry in her super-polite cut-drinking glass accent, "because I'm not good on that."
"Yeah," teases Paul, "so what she'southward saying is that I get the say on bread simply she does the rest, the pies, tarts, cakes, puddings, biscuits."
"I bet you watch yourself dorsum on a massive screen, don't you Paulie?" jokes Mel. "Paulie Night down at the local cinema.''
Sue, openly gay, looks at him then says: "I remember when I commencement saw him, chaffing dough with his permatan. Paulie and I are deeply sexually attracted to i another you know, merely nosotros take to express it through violence."
After in the twenty-four hours I do meet Paul, off–camera, getting Sue into a sort of playful headlock. Apparently, it's 1 of the many martial arts moves he practises on her, including a roundhouse kick which she says tin can be trying when she's got to get straight into filming a link about brioche.
Who'd have known that this eccentric group of judges and presenters would gel besides as it has? A bit of a geezer from Liverpool, an upper-class lady from the shires, and a one-act act of a gay woman and a female parent-of-two who re-formed for the chore? It doesn't sound like a winning formula, but so equally Anna Beattie, creator of Bake Off, explains, nothing about the show sounded similar a success when it first aired in 2010:
"Information technology took usa 4 years to get anybody at any channel to take any notice. Nobody wanted it. Nobody liked it. We just kept on with information technology because we knew it was a good thought. I loved that idea of village fetes and an old-fashioned baking competition with people who only wanted to bake a good cake. It was as unproblematic as that."
The world woke up to the show'due south genius last summer, and the prospect of a new series is guaranteed to induce squeals of delight in both middle England and metropolitan Britain. Its all-embracing entreatment saw viewing figures for the final top at 7.2m, up from 5m in series two and two.2m at the beginning of series 1. At that place take been two consecutive Baftas, and it has been bought and copied in thirteen countries, mimicked down to the final detail of its famous tent and decor.
In that location are some slight tweaks this time circular to finish information technology feeling "a bit too cosy" says Beattie, just 1 of the bear witness's strengths is not trying too hard. And so changes are mostly in the effects, more 50s pigment colours, "a bit cooler than the Cath Kidston thing," says one of the prove's fine art directors, Sophie Irish.
The set design is integral to Broil Off'south heightened version of quintessential Englishness, all bunting and china tea services.The show's title has entered our lexicon. "People have bake offs everywhere, fetes and schools and offices have baking Fridays," says Mary, today as spry and cute as e'er in her fitted cerise jacket, and now, thank you to the show, both a star and a style queen. Paul has go fifty-fifty more than of a housewives' pin-upwards, fronting the American version of the show with a glamorous young co-presenter replacing Berry, and his marital issues becoming a tabloid scandal. Meanwhile, Mel and Sue accept been re-established as a comedy duo. So many people wanted to audition for this fourth series – around 16,000 – that the crew thought they would non be able to keep up with applications.
Paul thinks the testify'southward success is because "blistering is more of a treat whereas cooking is a job – you're non request somebody to reduce a sauce for three hours". Mel thinks it is considering "people love the slowness with which the contestant's characters unfold over the serial". Mary believes "information technology defenseless United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland in a time of recession and it is lovely and easy and considering it is so expensive to do other activities with children. Too, I retrieve the bakers support each other and go friends."
Subsequently every episode, Mary'southward grandchildren phone her, sometimes in floods of tears, saying: "Granny, yous chose the incorrect one!" "I love information technology when they telephone call. It connects me with the whole family. It'south nice. Although my married man is usually fast asleep behind his paper."
Bake Off's huge white tent is erected in the rolling grounds of Harptree Court, a gorgeous old pile of a country house 16 miles from Bristol. As well as looking later on the bakers and crew during the long days of filming, Harptree Courtroom likewise runs as a B&B all year round, even when the show is filming (guests manufactory around unfazed).
This morn, as usual, the contestants have been brought to set on the "Baker Motorcoach", the crew's nickname for the minibus that ferries them from their B&B in Bristol. They go back each night and go out for dinner and drinks all together: tiffin is eaten in a dining room on site, the baking challenge of that morning offered up as pudding or an extra alongside the main dish. To accomplish the final 12, the initial thousands are whittled down to around 100 to screen examination, with the best 60 advancing to a iii-day audition. Truthfully, it's a last 14, the 12 we encounter on screen plus ii understudies who wait in the wings (but can apply once more for another series). The baking guidelines for each episode are given two to three months in advance then that the contestants tin can come with their recipes and ingredients tin be bought. They tin then get-go practising. Tweaks are allowed upwardly to three days before the programme. (The final is not decided and then far in accelerate.) Today, the bakers are pretty much the only attribute of my visit that is strictly off-limits to guard against spoilers and giving the game away earlier transmission. But they do wave cheerily.
The coiffure is large, around sixty in full: bated from the producers, directors and researchers, there are v camera operators, 3 audio technicians, half-dozen runners, a makeup artist for the presenters, a paramedic, a health and condom expert and, crucially, iii abode economists. The recipe element of the prove is looked after past food producer Tallulah Radula-Scott, who sits down with Paul and Mary months in advance and works out what sort of challenges to fix for the prove's at present trademark signature, technical and show stopper blistering tasks.
Two makeshift rooms are the HQ of the whole operation. To the left is the prep kitchen, home of the home economists, and to the right is the gallery, where the managing director is monitoring the cameras and where, behind him, TV people from around the world see how it's done before going back and repeating it in their own country. Today at that place's a visit from a glam collection of Germans. "Information technology'southward like the circus in here!" says 1 to manager Scott Tankard: "I don't know how y'all put up with it! I'd merely get rid of everybody."
In the prep kitchen flour is beingness decanted into a row of Kilner jars ready for the side by side challenge. General ingredients such as sugar, freeze-dried raspberry pulverization, malden salt, olive oil and butter are kept in plastic boxes or bottles and the fridges. In London, where they filmed series two, there was a huge problem of sugar-addicted squirrels biting through the packaging then they now use plastic.
The washing up is done past 27-yr-old local woman Hannah Alvis in a tiny aluminium sink. All of it. Dishwashers are too noisy. Each mean solar day before filming starts, ovens are checked for temperature and a Victoria sponge baked in each one to cheque it's working properly. Near of the fresh ingredients used – eggs, flours, vegetables, fruit – are sourced from a nearby greengrocer, with the cyberspace useful for anything out of the ordinary. There'south besides a runner stationed at the door of the biggest local supermarket in example of emergency.
Today, equally usual, Mary and Paul did their "royal tour", what the crew telephone call that first shot of them meeting the contestants. The bakers work away at their doughs. Ane is treating herself with Rescue Remedy. Dorsum from Mad Men, Mel and Sue are doing pre-recorded links. Mel: "Information technology's one hour left, 1 hr left!" Sue: "OK bakers, 15 minutes left, 15 minutes left."
Autonomously from that, Sue tells me, she and Mel are virtually entirely unscripted. Watching them, information technology's apparent that they are the glue that holds the show together: "What you encounter on the screen is how information technology is," Sue says. "If you are talking about a hierarchy, the bakers are at the top. Nobody is out to catch them out, but if nosotros see them crying or something, Mel and I will go over there and put our coats over them or swear a lot considering we know then that the moving-picture show won't be able to be used."
Sue and Mel adore the bakers. They cry when certain favourite contestants get out, they tell me. "Janet! Oh Janet!' What series was she? When she made that marble block it was exactly like the one my mum used to brand, it fabricated me quite teary," says Sue.
Mary loves them too: "Oh I don't like the technical" she whispers to me later. "I love seeing them with their signature because they tin shine."
Paul is more ruthless. "I don't care well-nigh their personalities," he says. "You wouldn't get that if you went into a shop. For me, information technology's the final product."
"He'south the Henry Eight of blistering," teases Sue, "No emotion. Take a lilliputian love in your heart!"
"If anything, I'm more than mellow now," he says. There are snorts of derision.
"Anyway, I pretty much know by episode three who's going to win!" he continues.
"No, yous don't! You lot tin can't! No!" Mel, Sue and Mary cry. "I exercise," he insists.
"Actually," Sue tells me afterward, "Mel and I have learned to keep our mouths shut nearly anybody we think is really skilful, considering if we really honey somebody he'll want to go rid of them."
Off–camera Paul takes his last swig of Coke and gets to piece of work with his harsh words. Mary peers over the counters like a sharp-eyed rare bird. Contestant i gets a big tick, ii'due south bake is "doughy in the middle", three's is "undercooked". For number four the dough is raw – "I can't eat that!" says Paul. To contestant five he says: "It does such a nifty job at covering the burnt bits."
Is there comfort in such across-the-board disappointment? At lunch, the contestants grouping together and eat their lasagne without much sign of despondency. They're an upbeat bunch and there's no sign of tears. Their failures are cut up aslope tiffin for everybody to eat, although I noticed that once the filming had stopped the camera coiffure swooped like vultures.
Ane thing the Broil Off team seems relaxed about is an end to the current enthusiasm for baking: "No testify lasts for ever," says Anna Beattie. But for now, as Mel says, "the batch of bakers is always fresh", bringing with them their ain passions; cardamom this series, obviously, instead of final year'south chilli chocolate.
"People are still enjoying it," says Mel.
"And I think they are terribly clever to exercise the historical parts," says Mary.
"I ever fast forward through that fleck," says Paul.
Mary: "Oh I enjoy that enormously … the history of the wedding cake … the lovely locals… terribly good."
And with that, Broil Off'due south dysfunctional family unit is at it again, united even when disagreeing.
The Cracking British Bake Off returns to BBC2 in August
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/jul/20/bake-off-behind-the-scenes
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