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We all camp in that tent: seven Bake-Off secrets by Alison Hammond

THE Great British Bake Off is back, with new host Alison Hammond initiated into its sordid world of cakes and implied sex. These are the things she didn’t know: 

We all camp in the tent

You’re not allowed to leave the tent once filming starts. You can stroll around the grounds but you’re sleeping under canvas, feeding off leftover confectionary for 12 weeks. It’s dark, cold and you’re disturbed at midnight by Prue getting another macaron. Fielding sleeps with a line drawn around his body in icing sugar and never disturbs it.

They make up to 30 cakes a day

Think the cakes on screen are the only ones they make? So did I, once. The team slaves away baking up to 30 cakes, roulades, cronuts, zabagliones, flans, tarts, all the fucking rest and that goes on for days. The heat is unbearable. Then they decide it wasn’t good enough and use CGI cakes instead.

Paul Hollywood is played by Daniel Day Lewis

When he said he was retiring after his third Oscar, he meant he was throwing himself into a new role so completely he would never emerge from it. The role of Paul Hollywood, the silver-haired Scouse shaker of hands who nobody would ever suspect was talented. He’s gone so deep he even votes Tory.

This year there’s a drugs week

Cannabis-laced brownies with a light mescaline glaze have always been a feature of Bake Off afterparties – it was Mary’s recipe – so we’ve brought in drugs week. Whether hash oil brandy snaps, LSD frangipane or opium puffs, we’ll be making it, sampling it, and staggering around off our tits.

The ghosts of Mel and Sue haunt the tent

‘They could not be allowed to leave,’ as Paul explains, ‘they knew too much.’ So I don’t know who’s out there but they’re in here, the unquiet dead dwelling in the proving drawers. They swap the sugar for salt, knock teaspoons off tables and weep ectoplasm into the jus. Fielding they’re fine with, he walks their dead lands.

Prue Leith is from the future

That’s why she dresses like that. Apparently altering timelines is a subtle business and she was sent back to do this to avoid a dystopian future. ‘Or they just wanted rid of me,’ she added, unsure.

It is a ritual to summon Lugh, god of the harvest

The old ways were not being observed, the old gods unhonoured. So under the guise of an evening light-entertainment format Love Productions created a ritual that would ensure good harvests year on year. Lugh – Celtic geezer – loves it. And when we do Celebrity Bake-Off that ushers in spring.

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Six lazy sex positions for the minimal-effort lover, with the Mash sex columnist

THE high-impact multi-position end-changing shag is the dream, but what you really fancy is a nice lie down. Combine the two for lovely low-maintenance orgasms: 

The pub table crisps

As in the generous pub behaviour of tearing a packet of Walkers open and leaving them spread and ready for the whole table? This position is the sexual equivalent. Splay yourself open on the bed and let your partner lick their fingers and go at you.

Cloth tease

The opposite of striptease, this is where you layer up for warmth and still negotiate sex with zero flesh exposed, like mole people. The only foreplay will be a gentle zip, the only effort light rocking. Can’t be done in onesies. A terribly lackadaisical way to conceive a child.

The Jabba

Taking inspiration from the Star Wars character, this position involves slow, laboured movements, zero attention to personal hygiene and no pressure to omit any noise besides the odd unintelligible and unsubtitled grunt. The aim isn’t to have sex, it’s to repulse your partner into not wanting it.

The Madame Tussauds

Like a waxwork of Posh Spice, give him one of those handjobs where you curl your fingers and fix them in place, then let him fuck away. No wrist action required; the most basic level of providing a hole. Or the female equivalent where you lay two fingers on the bed and she grinds against them until you take credit for having found her clit.

Sexual Harrassment in the 1970s

Re-enact the crudest, most basic sexual harrassment possible, such as provided comedy in that dark decade: the man presses against the woman from behind, gropes her tits and continues grinding until he’s spoiled his underpants. Lying down, but he still says ‘Cor!’ and ‘Bloody hell, love’ occasionally.

All the trimmings

Not so much a position as a technical set-up. Outsource all the effort by getting porn blaring on as many screens as you have charged, all the sex toys you own out on the bed, including electric toothbrushes and appropriately-shaped vegetables, then open the love-aid buffet. Serve youself.

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