CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night’s TV: What’s more French than Bardot in a 2CV? It’s Monsieur Pastry!
Bake Off: The Professionals
A House Through Time
Rating: 
Lockdown confirmed what everyone already knew: baking has become Britain’s principal obsession.
A nation that once washed the car or mowed the lawn in spare moments is now immersed in cake-making.
Even junkie Billy in Sky’s Gangs Of London was piping cream twirls onto a Victoria sponge in his gangland kitchen last week.
Meanwhile his mother was downstairs with a pair of pliers, torturing a hit woman. Mum ought to take up baking for a hobby instead, it’s so much more relaxing.
Barely half of anything said by the Bake Off judges and contestants made sense, even if you knew what a pièce montée or a Paris-Brest was
But to do it well takes more than a bowl, butter and a bag of flour.
Bake Off: The Professionals (C4) proves that the best bakers have accents so incomprehensible, they literally require subtitles.
Barely half of anything said by the judges and contestants made sense, even if you knew what a pièce montée or a Paris-Brest was.
Singapore-born chef Cherish Finden can sometimes say more than she means: when one team made a mess of their mango custard in a mille feuille, she announced: ‘I was very disappointed with the feeling.’
But at least we know what she’s getting at. Fellow judge Benoit Blin was indecipherable at times.
He brought one woman to the verge of tears by telling her: ‘The perve pestry is compurty roo-oned’ — though whether he was criticising or propositioning her is anyone’s guess.
In his double-breasted blazer buttoned over a polo-neck jumper, Benoit looks as French as he sounds . . . that is, more French than Brigitte Bardot and Alain Delon selling onions out of a 2CV.
The producers must be doing this on purpose, for exotic effect.
Cherish and Benoit are a world away from the gruff Scouse tones of a Paul Hollywood or the clipped inflections of Prue Leith.
Almost all the contestants were subtitled, though that was usually because the stress of constructing a glazed peacock (plus edible eggs) from nougatine and molten sugar to an impossible deadline left them babbling in their native tongues.
Forgivable, if not understandable.
Presenter Tom Allen plainly didn’t have a clue what was going on. He flitted from one workstation to the next, making desperate small talk.
Only once did he seem at ease, when he recognised a chef’s aftershave. ‘Smells really nice, what are you wearing — ooh, David Beckham!’ he exclaimed.
Tom’s frivolous chatter was a distraction. An audience mad on cakes was interested only in getting tips and inspiration. Baking is now the universal language.
The language of the 18th century was perplexing historian David Olusoga in A House Through Time (BBC2), as he pored over a will left by one of its inhabitants.
Bristol sea captain Joseph Holbrook punished his younger daughter Ann from beyond the grave, by leaving her an allowance of £25 a year — rising to £30 if she behaved herself.
That was just enough to ensure she’d be miserable for life, the price she paid for ‘misbehaving and disobliging’ her father.
Prof David thought this hinted at a sexual scandal. I suspect it’s more likely Ann refused to marry the man her father chose for her.
We’ll never know for sure: guesswork is half the fun of history.
This second episode dropped the earlier insistence on blaming Bristol for Britain’s slave trade, and the stories that emerged were far more interesting.
One of the occupants of 10 Guinea Street was a lawyer named John Haberfield, who as city mayor took on the Chartist agitators.
Another was a maid called Hester Grey, whose husband used to beat her in drunken rages. This terraced house is giving up its secrets.