Prue Leith and Bake Off

Daughter, reading the paper one Saturday morning, asks me "Mum, what's an orghee?" (rhymes with corgi); confused I asked her to spell it, and she duly did, "o-r-g-y."

"Why do you ask pet?" I managed to reply, thinking to myself how am I going to answer this truthfully, yet in an age appropriate manner.  She is only 13, after all.

"There's an article in here about Bake Off," she continued.  Now, I know Channel Four's a little, shall we say, edgy, but what on earth is the link I thought.

"Well, according to this Prue Leith's been to an orgy."

Ah, I see.  So I explained as best I could that an orgy is a kind of wild party, and that it was perhaps quite a long time ago - although truthfully I have no idea, it could have been last week, and in this era of fake news, it might not even be true.  It's not something I want to type into Google to try and confirm, believe me.

She considered this momentarily, and then said solemnly "Mary Berry wouldn't have done that."

And that's the problem that Channel Four's Bake Off will have.  The new line up (yet to be confirmed but rumoured to include Prue) will always be compared to the old, measured and found wanting.

In much the same way, I saw a whole heap of Mary's and Prue's recipes compared and contrasted, and in fairness to Ms Leith, some of her recipes did quite well.

But do you know which one failed miserably?  The Victoria Sponge cake, in my mind the standard by which all other cakes are measured.  Mary's was a million times better.  Prue's didn't rise.  Mary's was light and fluffy and Prue's resembled something I would bake, similar to pancakes.

OK, until they're both standing in my kitchen with a cake that each of them has personally baked by hand, themselves, wanting my approval, I can't accurately judge. 

And I loved Prue on Great British Menu, I really did.  But when it comes to Bake Off, she's just not Mary.  But then again, nobody is.