The Great British Bake Off<\/a> before. Worst of all, though, his description of Lawson is: \u201cI remember my mum loved watching her growing up.\u201d Being disorganised is one thing. Not watching Bake Off is one thing. But referring to Nigella Lawson in the past tense, as something only enjoyed by elderly people? This will not do.<\/p>\nDanni, 25, HGV service centre administrator, Dorset\u2018Chaos, chaos, chaos!\u2019 \u2026 Danni. Photograph: Patch Dolan\/Channel 4<\/p>\n
Danni sounds great, but I fear they are not long for the world. Describing their baking style as \u201cChaos, chaos, chaos!\u201d (there\u2019s that red flag again), they also describe their superpower as never giving up. \u201cEven if I fail and fail and fail and fail, I just get back up and keep going and try again in a different way.\u201d I don\u2019t want to appear psychic here, guys, but I\u2019m pretty sure Danni failed.<\/p>\n
Gary, 67, retired garment technologist, Nottinghamshire\u2018Nice older man\u2019 \u2026 Gary. Photograph: Patch Dolan\/Channel 4<\/p>\n
Bake Off has been on the air for so long now that all its contestants tend to lapse into type. As such, Gary is this year\u2019s \u201cnice older man\u201d. He\u2019s pleasingly brief with his answers in the questionnaire, and appears to live very happily with his wife and all their animals. This is all good, of course, but expect him to be quickly outflanked by all the hungry youngsters who primarily see Bake off as a way to grow their Instagram followers.<\/p>\n
Shannon, 29, project planner and scheduler, Gloucestershire\u2018Lovely and earnest\u2019 \u2026 Shannon. Photograph: Patch Dolan\/Channel 4<\/p>\n
Shannon is the exact opposite of Gary. By a wide margin, her questionnaire is the longest of the year, running to almost 2,000 words (for reference, Gary\u2019s was about 500 words long). But what a wealth of information it is. For instance, we now know that she was a back-up baker on the show last year, that baking for the judges turned her stomach into \u201ca swarm of butterflies\u201d and that \u201cNigella brought this sensational presence into the tent, a kind of calm elegance that made the whole space feel homely and safe.\u201d She seems lovely and earnest but \u2013 and I\u2019m aware this is rich coming from me \u2013 the woman badly needs an editor.<\/p>\n
Gabe, 32, artist and drag king, West Midlands\u2018Professional nuisance\u2019 \u2026 Gabe. Photograph: Patch Dolan\/Channel 4<\/p>\n
The \u201cdaddy of Birmingham drag\u201d, Gabe describes themself as a \u201cprofessional nuisance\u201d. This may bear out. In their questionnaire, Gabe reveals that they did shots with Nigella, previously had their bum smacked by Alison Hammond and was ready to cream pie themselves in front of Noel Fielding. Every year I do these, without fail, I end up being followed on Instagram by one Bake Off contestant. I have a feeling that this year it\u2019s going to be Gabe.<\/p>\n
Moyin, 22, political economy student, Essex\u2018High achiever of the group\u2019 \u2026 Moyin. Photograph: Patch Dolan\/Channel 4<\/p>\n
From what I can tell, Moyin likes to present as the high achiever of the group. He was an under-20 100m champion, could make macarons by the age of 14 and makes a point of noting that he often attends seminars on global political thought. Alas, his questionnaire has given him away, in that he gives a full-blown spoiler in it. I won\u2019t repeat it, but it does involve Danni and genitalia. In other words, Moyin is a huge gossip and cannot be trusted.<\/p>\n
Yannis, 28, paediatric doctor, London\u2018Very thoughtful\u2019 \u2026 Yannis. Photograph: Patch Dolan\/Channel 4<\/p>\n
Yannis seems like a very composed, very thoughtful man. He is a Bangladeshi, born in Vienna but raised in London. He claims that Bake Off is the show that helped him learn to speak English. He puts great emphasis on caring for people. He is, as you will have seen, a paediatric doctor. So in that regard, I hope he does horribly here. The world needs more paediatric doctors and fewer people determined to leverage their stint on a cookery competition into semi-regular appearances on Sunday Brunch. Only instant failure can correct this cosmic unbalance.<\/p>\n
Tom, 25, hairdresser, West Yorkshire\u2018The makings of a potential winner\u2019 \u2026 Tom. Photograph: Patch Dolan\/Channel 4<\/p>\n
Now we get to the bakers I think will actually do well. Based on his bio, Tom has the makings of a potential winner. He seems deeply unfazed by the prospect of appearing on Bake Off, not only because he describes himself as \u201csuper chill\u201d but also because he seems to believe that it was his divine right to end up on the show. Also he claims to be obsessed by Nigella, which is the correct answer.<\/p>\n
Nikki, 50, advertising post-producer, London\u2018Certain to push through\u2019 \u2026 Nikki. Photograph: Patch Dolan\/Channel 4<\/p>\n
The primary thing to remember about Nikki is that she was once a podium dancer at Ziggy\u2019s nightclub in Basingstoke in the 1990s. In truth, I am a little worried about Nikki, because in the questionnaire she described her baking style as \u201cflavours, combinations and colours\u201d, which is such a weirdly rudimentary statement that I\u2019m worried she also describes her favourite film as \u201cnoises and shapes\u201d. But, hey, anyone who danced on podiums in Basingstoke can almost certainly push through.<\/p>\n
Connie, 63, NHS hospital discharge lead, London\u2018The Cake Lady\u2019 \u2026 Connie. Photograph: Patch Dolan\/Channel 4<\/p>\n
Connie loves baking cakes so much that people literally call her \u201cthe Cake Lady\u201d, and she isn\u2019t upset by it. Plenty of the other bakers go out of their way to name Connie in their bios, too, which has to be a good sign of how well-liked she is. She also keeps a jar of fruit permanently soaking in rum, which is what poachers did in Danny the Champion of the World. What I\u2019m trying to say is that Connie sounds like someone who could poach animals for a living, and I\u2019m too terrified to put her lower on the list.<\/p>\n
Molly, 31, accessibility coordinator, London\u2018The woman to beat\u2019 \u2026 Molly. Photograph: Patch Dolan\/Channel 4<\/p>\n
Molly has been baking since she was six. However, that isn\u2019t why I think she will win Bake Off this year. No, I think she will win Bake Off because her bio states that she is 25% of the way through a 350,000-stitch cross-stitch landscape of Rivendell. Can you imagine the patience, the attention to detail, the sheer bloody-minded obsessiveness required to do such a thing? Clearly this is the woman to beat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The new contestants of this year\u2019s Great British Bake Off don\u2019t know how lucky they are. Usually when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":608950,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[146,85,46],"class_list":["post-608949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/608950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}