Phoebe Luckhurst: Bake Off is an out-of-control village fête. I can’t stomach it

And so, after fanfare and furore, Bake Off returns. This morning, the first reviews arrived — layered, predictably, with pun after tedious pun on “flavoursome” programming and “soggy bottoms”.

Broadly, the new line-up, a quartet of maligned veteran Paul Hollywood, Prue Leith, Sandi Toksvig and warlock comedian Noel Fielding, is agreed to have been a success.

Certainly, Channel 4, which paid £75 million to acquire the show from the BBC, will be relieved — though presumably less so by Leith’s advice to viewers that they watch on catch-up to swerve the adverts.

At its peak in the last series, 14.8 million people watched Bake Off. Realistically, Channel 4 will attract fewer viewers, though the coverage will be inescapable. Indeed, we are already being invited to pick our favourite contestant: Channel 4 has of course managed to find the requisite attractive man (an architect!) who likes to bake.

In case you can’t tell, I cannot stomach Bake Off. I know it sounds joyless and ungenerous: certainly, taking umbrage with a jolly show about cakes does not endear you to many people. But I cannot help it. It’s twee: the public ceremony of baking elevates faffing about with some sugar and butter to a matter of national import, and I find it bewildering.

Last year, when Channel 4 acquired the programme, losing Mary Berry, and Mel and Sue, I received three separate breaking news missives to my iPhone on the afternoon in question.

I remember, because I screenshotted each in disbelief. While I don’t want to sound like a swivel-eyed commentator — “IS THIS REALLY NEWS?!?!” — privately, I did rather wonder why it was.

The language (“soggy bottoms”, “showstoppers”, lazy innuendo about buns) rankles, and the imagery of it — plump strawberries and thick clotted cream, aprons and pastel mixing bowls, Union Flags — suggests to me the nightmare of living inside a room wallpapered with Keep Calm and Carry On posters.

Granted, I suspect that as a 27-year old girl I am also turned off by the idea of baking in principle.

Wrongly or otherwise, it reminds me of subservient Fifties housewives. Indeed, I feel the same with cooking at all. We spent decades — centuries – clawing our way out of the kitchen, and vaunting domesticity with such fanfare feels like a throwback that makes me uncomfortable.

Maybe that ascribes too much significance to Bake Off — though it’s top of the national news agenda this morning, so perhaps it doesn’t.

And of course, hobbies are hobbies, there is nothing at all wrong with baking if that’s what you’re into, nor — obviously – cake. But the Bake Off juggernaut, this out-of-control village fête, is too much of a sugar rush for me.