They bicker, they tease – and watch Mad Men together. On the set of the new series, we meet the team behind a TV phenomenon
We call her Bez or Bezzer most of the time," Mel Giedroyc says looking across at Mary Berry. "Or Mucky Mary," says Sue Perkins, "or Dirty Bezzer. Bezzer pretends to be interested in what the bakers have made but the only question on her mind really is: 'Is there a bit of alcohol here that I can get my hands on? A bit of rum?'"
"Oh yes!" interjects Paul Hollywood, "Mary loves nothing better than taking all the bakers out for a drink and playing darts with them."
"Bez loves a game of darts," says Sue. "Then she'll get the glow sticks out about 2am."
Mary looks defeated, as if she's lost control of three naughty toddlers. "Will you please behave! Don't pay any attention to them, I've never played darts in my life!"
We are on the set of The Great British Bake Off, which starts its fourth series next month. There is a lull in the punishing filming schedule – it takes two 12-hour days to film one episode, 10 weeks to film a series – and Mary "Bez" Berry, Paul Hollywood and Mel and Sue are about to sit down together on a couple of sofas in their dressing room and watch episode five of series two of Mad Men.
They regularly get 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, they say, albeit a dysfunctional one, according to Mel. "We bicker and we tease and we laugh at ridiculous gags and make up stupid games."
Offscreen discord and power struggles between Berry and Hollywood over what constitutes a good crumb and a soggy bottom? You must be kidding. "I do always bow to Paul on bread," says Berry in her super-polite cut-glass accent, "because I'm not good on that."
"Yeah," teases Paul, "so what she's saying is that I get the say on bread but she does the rest, the pies, tarts, cakes, puddings, biscuits."
"I bet you watch yourself back 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 first saw him, chaffing dough with his permatan. Paulie and I are deeply sexually attracted to one another you know, but we have to express it through violence."
Later in the day I do see Paul, off–camera, getting Sue into a sort of playful headlock. Apparently, it's one of the many martial arts moves he practises on her, including a roundhouse kick which she says can be trying when she's got to go straight into filming a link about brioche.
Who'd have known that this eccentric group of judges and presenters would gel as well as it has? A bit of a geezer from Liverpool, an upper-class lady from the shires, and a comedy act of a gay woman and a mother-of-two who re-formed for the job? It doesn't sound like a winning formula, but then as Anna Beattie, creator of Bake Off, explains, nothing about the show sounded like a success when it first aired in 2010:
"It took us four years to get anybody at any channel to take any notice. Nobody wanted it. Nobody liked it. We just kept on with it because we knew it was a good idea. 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 simple as that."
The world woke up to the show's 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 across-the-board appeal saw viewing figures for the final peak at 7.2m, up from 5m in series two and 2.2m at the beginning of series one. There have been two consecutive Baftas, and it has been bought and copied in 13 countries, mimicked down to the last detail of its famous tent and decor.
There are some slight tweaks this time round to stop it feeling "a bit too cosy" says Beattie, but one of the show's strengths is not trying too hard. So changes are mostly in the furnishings, more 50s paint colours, "a bit cooler than the Cath Kidston thing," says one of the show's art directors, Sophie Irish.
The set design is integral to Bake Off's 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 beautiful as ever in her fitted cerise jacket, and now, thanks to the show, both a star and a style queen. Paul has become even more of a housewives' pin-up, fronting the American version of the show with a glamorous young co-presenter replacing Berry, and his marital problems becoming a tabloid scandal. Meanwhile, Mel and Sue have 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 not be able to keep up with applications.
Paul thinks the show's success is because "baking is more of a treat whereas cooking is a chore – you're not asking somebody to reduce a sauce for three hours". Mel thinks it is because "people love the slowness with which the contestant's characters unfold over the series". Mary believes "it caught Britain in a time of recession and it is lovely and easy and because it is so expensive to do other activities with children. Also, I think the bakers support each other and become friends."
After every episode, Mary's grandchildren phone her, sometimes in floods of tears, saying: "Granny, you chose the wrong one!""I love it when they call. It connects me with the whole family. It's nice. Although my husband 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 after the bakers and crew during the long days of filming, Harptree Court also runs as a B&B all year round, even when the show is filming (guests mill around unfazed).
This morning, as usual, the contestants have been brought to set on the "Baker Bus", 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: lunch 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 reach the final 12, the initial thousands are whittled down to around 100 to screen test, with the best 60 advancing to a three-day audition. Truthfully, it's a final 14, the 12 we see on screen plus two understudies who wait in the wings (but can apply again for another series). The baking guidelines for each episode are given two to three months in advance so that the contestants can come up with their recipes and ingredients can be bought. They can then start practising. Tweaks are allowed up to three days before the programme. (The final is not decided so far in advance.) Today, the bakers are pretty much the only aspect of my visit that is strictly off-limits to guard against spoilers and giving the game away before transmission. But they do wave cheerily.
The crew is large, around 60 in total: aside from the producers, directors and researchers, there are five camera operators, three sound technicians, six runners, a makeup artist for the presenters, a paramedic, a health and safety expert and, crucially, three home economists. The recipe element of the show is looked after by food producer Tallulah Radula-Scott, who sits down with Paul and Mary months in advance and works out what sort of challenges to set for the show's now trademark signature, technical and show stopper baking 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 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 there's a visit from a glam collection of Germans. "It's like the circus in here!" says one to director Scott Tankard: "I don't know how you put up with it! I'd just get rid of everybody."
In the prep kitchen flour is being decanted into a row of Kilner jars ready for the next challenge. General ingredients such as sugar, freeze-dried raspberry powder, 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 so they now use plastic.
The washing up is done by 27-year-old local woman Hannah Alvis in a tiny aluminium sink. All of it. Dishwashers are too noisy. Each day before filming starts, ovens are checked for temperature and a Victoria sponge baked in each one to check it's working properly. Most of the fresh ingredients used – eggs, flours, vegetables, fruit – are sourced from a nearby greengrocer, with the internet useful for anything out of the ordinary. There's also a runner stationed at the door of the biggest local supermarket in case of emergency.
*Today, as usual, Mary and Paul did their "royal tour"*, what the crew call that first shot of them meeting the contestants. The bakers work away at their doughs. One is treating herself with Rescue Remedy. Back from Mad Men, Mel and Sue are doing pre-recorded links. Mel: "It's one hour left, one hour left!" Sue: "OK bakers, 15 minutes left, 15 minutes left."
Apart from that, Sue tells me, she and Mel are almost entirely unscripted. Watching them, it's apparent that they are the glue that holds the show together: "What you see on the screen is how it 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 we see them crying or something, Mel and I will go over there and put our coats over them or swear a lot because we know then that the film won't be able to be used."
Sue and Mel adore the bakers. They cry when certain favourite contestants leave, they tell me. "Janet! Oh Janet!' What series was she? When she made that marble cake it was exactly like the one my mum used to make, it made 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 can shine."
Paul is more ruthless. "I don't care about their personalities," he says. "You wouldn't get that if you went into a shop. For me, it's the final product."
"He's the Henry VIII of baking," teases Sue, "No emotion. Have a little love in your heart!"
"If anything, I'm more 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, you don't! You can't! No!" Mel, Sue and Mary cry. "I do," he insists.
"Actually," Sue tells me later, "Mel and I have learned to keep our mouths shut about anybody we think is really good, because if we really love somebody he'll want to get rid of them."
Off–camera Paul takes his last swig of Coke and gets to work with his harsh words. Mary peers over the counters like a sharp-eyed rare bird. Contestant one gets a big tick, two's 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 great job at covering the burnt bits."
Is there comfort in such across-the-board disappointment? At lunch, the contestants group 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 alongside lunch for everybody to eat, although I noticed that once the filming had stopped the camera crew swooped like vultures.
One thing the Bake Off team seems relaxed about is an end to the current enthusiasm for baking: "No show lasts for ever," says Anna Beattie. But for now, as Mel says, "the batch of bakers is always fresh", bringing with them their own passions; cardamom this series, apparently, instead of last year's chilli chocolate.
"People are still enjoying it," says Mel.
"And I think they are terribly clever to do the historical parts," says Mary.
"I always fast forward through that bit," says Paul.
Mary: "Oh I enjoy that enormously … the history of the wedding cake … the lovely locals… terribly good."
And with that, Bake Off's dysfunctional family is at it again, united even when disagreeing.
The Great British Bake Off returns to BBC2 in August Reported by guardian.co.uk 6 days ago.
We call her Bez or Bezzer most of the time," Mel Giedroyc says looking across at Mary Berry. "Or Mucky Mary," says Sue Perkins, "or Dirty Bezzer. Bezzer pretends to be interested in what the bakers have made but the only question on her mind really is: 'Is there a bit of alcohol here that I can get my hands on? A bit of rum?'"
"Oh yes!" interjects Paul Hollywood, "Mary loves nothing better than taking all the bakers out for a drink and playing darts with them."
"Bez loves a game of darts," says Sue. "Then she'll get the glow sticks out about 2am."
Mary looks defeated, as if she's lost control of three naughty toddlers. "Will you please behave! Don't pay any attention to them, I've never played darts in my life!"
We are on the set of The Great British Bake Off, which starts its fourth series next month. There is a lull in the punishing filming schedule – it takes two 12-hour days to film one episode, 10 weeks to film a series – and Mary "Bez" Berry, Paul Hollywood and Mel and Sue are about to sit down together on a couple of sofas in their dressing room and watch episode five of series two of Mad Men.
They regularly get 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, they say, albeit a dysfunctional one, according to Mel. "We bicker and we tease and we laugh at ridiculous gags and make up stupid games."
Offscreen discord and power struggles between Berry and Hollywood over what constitutes a good crumb and a soggy bottom? You must be kidding. "I do always bow to Paul on bread," says Berry in her super-polite cut-glass accent, "because I'm not good on that."
"Yeah," teases Paul, "so what she's saying is that I get the say on bread but she does the rest, the pies, tarts, cakes, puddings, biscuits."
"I bet you watch yourself back 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 first saw him, chaffing dough with his permatan. Paulie and I are deeply sexually attracted to one another you know, but we have to express it through violence."
Later in the day I do see Paul, off–camera, getting Sue into a sort of playful headlock. Apparently, it's one of the many martial arts moves he practises on her, including a roundhouse kick which she says can be trying when she's got to go straight into filming a link about brioche.
Who'd have known that this eccentric group of judges and presenters would gel as well as it has? A bit of a geezer from Liverpool, an upper-class lady from the shires, and a comedy act of a gay woman and a mother-of-two who re-formed for the job? It doesn't sound like a winning formula, but then as Anna Beattie, creator of Bake Off, explains, nothing about the show sounded like a success when it first aired in 2010:
"It took us four years to get anybody at any channel to take any notice. Nobody wanted it. Nobody liked it. We just kept on with it because we knew it was a good idea. 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 simple as that."
The world woke up to the show's 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 across-the-board appeal saw viewing figures for the final peak at 7.2m, up from 5m in series two and 2.2m at the beginning of series one. There have been two consecutive Baftas, and it has been bought and copied in 13 countries, mimicked down to the last detail of its famous tent and decor.
There are some slight tweaks this time round to stop it feeling "a bit too cosy" says Beattie, but one of the show's strengths is not trying too hard. So changes are mostly in the furnishings, more 50s paint colours, "a bit cooler than the Cath Kidston thing," says one of the show's art directors, Sophie Irish.
The set design is integral to Bake Off's 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 beautiful as ever in her fitted cerise jacket, and now, thanks to the show, both a star and a style queen. Paul has become even more of a housewives' pin-up, fronting the American version of the show with a glamorous young co-presenter replacing Berry, and his marital problems becoming a tabloid scandal. Meanwhile, Mel and Sue have 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 not be able to keep up with applications.
Paul thinks the show's success is because "baking is more of a treat whereas cooking is a chore – you're not asking somebody to reduce a sauce for three hours". Mel thinks it is because "people love the slowness with which the contestant's characters unfold over the series". Mary believes "it caught Britain in a time of recession and it is lovely and easy and because it is so expensive to do other activities with children. Also, I think the bakers support each other and become friends."
After every episode, Mary's grandchildren phone her, sometimes in floods of tears, saying: "Granny, you chose the wrong one!""I love it when they call. It connects me with the whole family. It's nice. Although my husband 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 after the bakers and crew during the long days of filming, Harptree Court also runs as a B&B all year round, even when the show is filming (guests mill around unfazed).
This morning, as usual, the contestants have been brought to set on the "Baker Bus", 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: lunch 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 reach the final 12, the initial thousands are whittled down to around 100 to screen test, with the best 60 advancing to a three-day audition. Truthfully, it's a final 14, the 12 we see on screen plus two understudies who wait in the wings (but can apply again for another series). The baking guidelines for each episode are given two to three months in advance so that the contestants can come up with their recipes and ingredients can be bought. They can then start practising. Tweaks are allowed up to three days before the programme. (The final is not decided so far in advance.) Today, the bakers are pretty much the only aspect of my visit that is strictly off-limits to guard against spoilers and giving the game away before transmission. But they do wave cheerily.
The crew is large, around 60 in total: aside from the producers, directors and researchers, there are five camera operators, three sound technicians, six runners, a makeup artist for the presenters, a paramedic, a health and safety expert and, crucially, three home economists. The recipe element of the show is looked after by food producer Tallulah Radula-Scott, who sits down with Paul and Mary months in advance and works out what sort of challenges to set for the show's now trademark signature, technical and show stopper baking 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 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 there's a visit from a glam collection of Germans. "It's like the circus in here!" says one to director Scott Tankard: "I don't know how you put up with it! I'd just get rid of everybody."
In the prep kitchen flour is being decanted into a row of Kilner jars ready for the next challenge. General ingredients such as sugar, freeze-dried raspberry powder, 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 so they now use plastic.
The washing up is done by 27-year-old local woman Hannah Alvis in a tiny aluminium sink. All of it. Dishwashers are too noisy. Each day before filming starts, ovens are checked for temperature and a Victoria sponge baked in each one to check it's working properly. Most of the fresh ingredients used – eggs, flours, vegetables, fruit – are sourced from a nearby greengrocer, with the internet useful for anything out of the ordinary. There's also a runner stationed at the door of the biggest local supermarket in case of emergency.
*Today, as usual, Mary and Paul did their "royal tour"*, what the crew call that first shot of them meeting the contestants. The bakers work away at their doughs. One is treating herself with Rescue Remedy. Back from Mad Men, Mel and Sue are doing pre-recorded links. Mel: "It's one hour left, one hour left!" Sue: "OK bakers, 15 minutes left, 15 minutes left."
Apart from that, Sue tells me, she and Mel are almost entirely unscripted. Watching them, it's apparent that they are the glue that holds the show together: "What you see on the screen is how it 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 we see them crying or something, Mel and I will go over there and put our coats over them or swear a lot because we know then that the film won't be able to be used."
Sue and Mel adore the bakers. They cry when certain favourite contestants leave, they tell me. "Janet! Oh Janet!' What series was she? When she made that marble cake it was exactly like the one my mum used to make, it made 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 can shine."
Paul is more ruthless. "I don't care about their personalities," he says. "You wouldn't get that if you went into a shop. For me, it's the final product."
"He's the Henry VIII of baking," teases Sue, "No emotion. Have a little love in your heart!"
"If anything, I'm more 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, you don't! You can't! No!" Mel, Sue and Mary cry. "I do," he insists.
"Actually," Sue tells me later, "Mel and I have learned to keep our mouths shut about anybody we think is really good, because if we really love somebody he'll want to get rid of them."
Off–camera Paul takes his last swig of Coke and gets to work with his harsh words. Mary peers over the counters like a sharp-eyed rare bird. Contestant one gets a big tick, two's 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 great job at covering the burnt bits."
Is there comfort in such across-the-board disappointment? At lunch, the contestants group 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 alongside lunch for everybody to eat, although I noticed that once the filming had stopped the camera crew swooped like vultures.
One thing the Bake Off team seems relaxed about is an end to the current enthusiasm for baking: "No show lasts for ever," says Anna Beattie. But for now, as Mel says, "the batch of bakers is always fresh", bringing with them their own passions; cardamom this series, apparently, instead of last year's chilli chocolate.
"People are still enjoying it," says Mel.
"And I think they are terribly clever to do the historical parts," says Mary.
"I always fast forward through that bit," says Paul.
Mary: "Oh I enjoy that enormously … the history of the wedding cake … the lovely locals… terribly good."
And with that, Bake Off's dysfunctional family is at it again, united even when disagreeing.
The Great British Bake Off returns to BBC2 in August Reported by guardian.co.uk 6 days ago.