THERE’S something satisfying about watching celebrities chop and char or beat and bake. Sleb Safari will watch Celebrity Masterchef over Masterchef: The Professionals every time and the same goes for charity spin-off The Great Celebrity Bake Off for Stand Up to Cancer.
This year’s cohort are a fun bunch and Sleb Safari is predicting that Olympic diver Tom Daley will be very, very good at this baking caper and his showstopper will either be a pool with diving boards at three different heights or a cardigan-shaped cake covered in icing that looks exactly like an intricate knitting pattern. There is nothing this man can’t do once he sets his mind to it and he will be practising furiously as we speak.
Sleb Safari also feels a breezy confidence that after Gemma Collins drops her bake and then stands on it in the first episode she’ll bring a shaman in to cleanse the Bake Off tent, just as she did the Dancing on Ice rink.
Gemma’s “professional space clearing consultant” goes by the name Fire Horse as well as her given name, Sue. Fire Horse told the Daily Mirror the Dancing On Ice rink had been built on a former WW2 RAF base making it completely unsuited to any joyous expressions of movement because of the residual anxiety of the air force personnel.
Fire Horse and Gemma went straight to the spot on the ice where the latter had suffered an unpleasant fall on live telly, discovering “two lines of disharmonious land energy… crossing the ice rink”. Fire Horse Sue set up a table, placed lighted candles and significant objects on it, then banged a drum while Gemma shook a crystal filled rattle. On the very next show Gemma took to the ice with confidence - and was eliminated.
The Great Celebrity Bake Off for Stand Up to Cancer has three elements, a technical challenge, a signature bake and a showstopper and if anyone knows how to stop a show it’s the GC. She fell through a trapdoor at a teen awards show a few years ago because she was so busy twirling around after doing her ‘the winner is’ bit that she didn’t notice a hole opening up in the stage floor to allow Love Island award winners to make a grand entrance. Now that’s a showstopper.
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Name names Graham Norton
Graham Norton, the chat show king, has been spilling the beans on demanding guests. Unfortunately he has only opened and spilled a mini tin of beans, not the full 415 grams.
Graham told a US show that “someone who shall remain nameless… wanted nine dressing rooms” when they agreed to appear on his Friday night BBC chatshow.
“So we got them nine dressing rooms, that was fine, and in the afternoon, someone came running into the production office saying, ‘911 situation, we need another dressing room.’”
At which point a producer asked: “Out of interest… why do you need a 10th dressing room?” to which the person replied: “Oh, they’re charging their phone.”
Who doesn’t like to have a separate room in which to leave a phone charging in peace?
Behaviour like that won’t win you a bench in The Great Celebrity Bake Off for Stand Up to Cancer tent. Name names Graham Norton.
