Mary Berry: the lost key ingredient in Bake Off's baked Alaska

Mary Berry is the heart and soul of The Great British Bake Off. It is her kindly, deeply competent, generous-natured on-screen character that gives the show its sweetness and lightness. When she tells a competitor that “Queen Victoria would be proud” of their beautifully iced and decorated cake, or that they “really need to pull their socks up” after a particularly wobbly example of gingerbread architecture, the stern-fair-kind grandmother of every childhood imagination is summoned up.

Paul Hollywood, her co-judge, is excellent too. His very particular masculinity is a foil to her stately matronliness. He, a baker by trade, represents professionalism, technique, training and skill. Berry, on the other hand, brings the comforting aura of the farmhouse kitchen. Hollywood is very effective as a screen presence: his now-famous handshake represents the zenith of his scale of praise, a hard Paddington stare the depths of his disdain. But it is not clear that he is enough to keep the show going on his own.

The stars of Bake Off work because they interact together, because of their relationships, not because of who they are in themselves. It’s all about the way Mary twinkles indulgently at one of Sue’s naughtier double entendres, and the manner in which Paul plays hard cop to Mary’s more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger reaction to collapsed meringues or liquid bavarois. It’s about the way Mel and Sue so palpably are good friends, and the way they extend that friendliness not only to the competitors but also to the viewers.

In truth, The Great British Bake Off brand may have been irreparably damaged the moment its audiences gained the impression that Love Productions, its makers, were so hot in pursuit of Mammon when negotiating with broadcasters. The suspicion that the producers had been “greedy” sits uneasily with the virtues that the series projects: generosity, friendliness, a certain competitiveness but always laced with co operation , good humour and good fun.

Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins’s refusal to accompany the show to Channel 4 was clearly an act of resistance. Now Berry’s announcement that she feels impelled by “loyalty” to remain with the BBC is surely the coup de grace for the programme. The values that the show projects, and the values of its most significant stars, seem to have become completely unravelled from those of its maker. Paradoxical, since Love Productions came up with the brilliant idea of the Bake Off in the first place.

As Berry has pointed out in her statement, the whole thing is a terrible shame, particularly for the audience of The Great British Bake Off, to whom the show has given so much pleasure over the past seven seasons. The recent shenanigans feel like the TV equivalent of ruining your baked Alaska and flinging it into a flip-top bin. But that’s showbusiness. And, while it may be big business for Channel 4 and Love Productions and the BBC, in the end, for the rest of us, it’s only telly.