The 15th series of The Great British Bake Off begins next week, ushering in a new season of tents, handshakes and excruciatingly elaborate bakes. As always, 12 would-be star bakers will spend the series attempting to prove their worth. The best way to judge their ability would be to watch the show and discern talent based on output. But we’re all busy people and that would take too long, so let’s judge them the way nature intended: on the basis of the contestant biographies sent out by Channel 4. Here they are, from worst to last.
Andy, 44, Essex
Andy is a car mechanic from Essex who has entered the contest to make his mother proud. Clearly, he is as salt-of-the-earth as people get. And yet, what are the two worst things you can put in a cake? That’s right – salt and earth. Sadly, this fundamental misunderstanding of the basics of cookery will see him ejected from the tent at the first opportunity.
Christiaan, 33, London
Christiaan moved to the UK from the Netherlands seven years ago. To put that into context, when he got here, The Great British Bake Off had been going for so long that it wasn’t even on BBC One any more. He describes himself as very insecure, noting that he takes all criticism personally. So for me to say that he’ll only last two episodes probably makes me a monster. But I didn’t come here to make friends.
Dylan, 20, Buckinghamshire
I’m sure Dylan is a lovely person. From his contestant bio, he seems sweet and sensitive, and I’m sure he has many things going for him. However, part of the bio requires the contestants to list their strengths and weaknesses. This is where doubts start to creep in, because in the “weaknesses” section, Dylan has just written “cakes”. On The Great British Bake Off. CAKES. This is like going on Race Across the World and listing your primary weakness as racing across the world. This is like applying for a job as a nuclear bomb defuser and listing your weakness as “bad at stopping explosions”. Dylan, what were you thinking?
Sumayah, 19, Lancashire
Sumayah is a dental student, and spends her days learning how best to keep your teeth in perfect condition. Yet here she is, on the closest thing television currently has to a Pouring-Loads-of-Sugar-Directly-Into-Your-Mouth competition. So is Sumayah an inveterate rebel, keen to break all the rules? Or is she unusually bad at retaining key information? Either way, she’s a dangerous presence.
Jeff, 67, West Yorkshire
Jeff is originally from the Bronx, something his official bio makes the most of by repeatedly referencing basketball and New York cheesecakes. Let’s continue to stereotype him by saying that he’ll be forcibly disqualified from Bake Off for yelling “I’M WALKING HERE!” at Alison Hammond while eating an overrated slice of pizza, and that his best friend J-Lo will drive him home.
John, 37, West Midlands
One question in the bio this year is “What’s the craziest kind of showstopper you can think of to make?”, to which John replied: “I would LOVE to make a showstopper of a water fountain … with actual moving water.” Oh, the artistic obsession with an unrealisable dream. Do you think John dreams about the mechanics of the water fountain cake at night? Is his bedroom covered with pictures of water fountains and cakes, joined together with bits of string? Should we check him for tattoos? If John doesn’t get a chance to make this water fountain cake this year, may God have mercy on our souls.
Illiyin, 31, Norfolk
Bit of a dark horse, is Illiyin. She liked to bake as a kid, she enjoys experimenting with flavour and has a fondness for spatulas. This is all she’s prepared to give away in her bio. Through sheer lack of information, I’m going to hedge and hide her in the middle of the pack.
Georgie, 34, Carmarthenshire
Another part of the bio asks the bakers what a cake of themselves would look like. Georgie says the cake would show her with a slice of cake in her hand. What does this mean? Does it mean that Georgie is an Inception-level cake genius, capable of hiding thousands of successive layers of cake inside other cakes? Or does it mean, as someone who would eat cake if she were a cake, that she is some kind of cannibal? Best not to find out is my advice.
Mike, 29, Wiltshire
I have concerns about Mike. Not only is he a contestant on The Great British Bake Off in 2024, he was also shortlisted for Young Farmer of the Year in 2024. Needless to say, this is too many things for one person to be good at, and I urge Mike to choose. He must sacrifice one thing to achieve true greatness, so which will it be: getting up at the crack of dawn to eke out a living from the land, or getting loads of followers on Instagram from being on telly and probably writing a newspaper column from it? Who can possibly say?
Gill, 53, Lancashire
Gill describes her job as “senior category manager”. I think this is less a job than three random words pulled from a tombola to disguise the fact that Gill is clearly an international super spy. Better just give her a bunch of Star Bakers so she doesn’t snap your neck in a hotel stairwell.
Hazel, 71, Kent
Based on the sheer heft of her bio, you would have to say that Hazel is the runaway winner this year. But take a closer look at her proudest achievements. One of her favourite things to do, she says, is to make radio-controlled cakes. For her daughter’s sixth birthday, she spent two weeks making a cake covered in 500 edible diamonds. I’ve been to kids’ parties before, so I know any cake you make is destined to be a) dismantled aggressively by hand, b) sneezed over by a minimum of eight people and c) instantly forgotten. My big fear is that Hazel will go too big in the tent and this will be her downfall.
Nelly, 44, Dorset
I’m already a big fan of Nelly. She’s a palliative care assistant, so she does an important and often thankless job. She says that baking a cake of herself would be easy because she looks like a scone, so she has a sense of humour. And she states clearly that she doesn’t enjoy eating insects, which is a very specific thing to say in a generic contestant bio, but it’s good to be clear about these things. Nelly for the win.
• The Great British Bake Off is back on 24 September at 8pm on Channel 4.
