The Great British Bake Off is upon us once more, shipping a new fleet of enthusiastic bakers into the big tent for another round of slightly too ambitious bakes. In time, these bakers will become like a second family to their audience. But for now, it’s fair to say, we have no clue who any of them are.
So, in time-honoured tradition, here’s my predicted ranking of the 2025 Great British Bake Off intake. The usual qualifications apply: I am basing this solely on the imageless press release that Channel 4 sent out, plus in all the years I have been doing this I have never once been right about anything. You’re welcome!
12. Toby, 29, Warwickshire
Toby works for a fitness startup, and uses his contestant biography to reveal that he is three years into a home renovation project that was scheduled to last just six months. This leads me to believe that he initially applied to appear on Grand Designs, and is only on Bake Off due to a catastrophic clerical error.
11. Lesley, 59, Kent
It has to be said that Lesley sounds absolutely lovely in her biography. However, she is a hairdresser who insists on giving a slice of cake to all her customers. So now I am fixated on what a terrible hairy cakey biohazard her floor must be, which is why I have ranked her so poorly.
10. Nadia, 41, Liverpool
I’ve been doing this for long enough to know a red flag when I see one, and Nadia is absolutely buried in them. Exhibit A: she is described as a “chatterbox”, which is code for “annoying”. Exhibit B: there are repeated mentions of her performing dance breaks, which is code for “attention seeking”. Exhibit C: like Lesley, she is a hairdresser, which is code for “I, Stuart, am bald and need to take out my insecurities on someone.”
9. Iain, 29, Belfast
The big concern with a show such as Bake Off is that it has been around for so long that it tends to attract people so desperate for fame that their personas have solidified into rigid caricatures. Enter Iain, a powerlifting influencer who refers to himself as the Yeastie Boy. However, let me remind you that at the time of writing, I don’t know what any of the contestants look like. If it turns out that Iain is big enough to beat me up, please ignore everything I just said and put him in the top three.
8. Aaron, 38, London
Lots to worry about here. Aaron, who moved to London from Manchester four years ago, uses his contestant bio to make two controversial statements. One is to call himself The King of Hobbies, which makes him sound like a dilettante who never sticks with anything long enough to reach a point of basic competency. The second is that he refers to hotdogs as a snack, which genuinely beggars belief.
7. Leighton, 59, Surrey
Leighton is a Welshman who lives in Surrey with his California husband and has a mathematical mind, which tends to be an advantage on a show like this. However, Leighton’s bio also reveals that he specialises in a fusion style of baking that doesn’t sound particularly delicious. One of his favourite dishes, for instance, is a victoria sponge with key lime pie filling. Honestly.
6. Tom, 31, London
Tom is a “creative entrepreneur”, which means that he founded an advertising agency then left it. The worrying part of his bio, though, is the bit where he cites Nadiya Hussain as an inspiration, because she has dealt with a level of fame that he thinks he will soon experience. I’m worried that getting eliminated from a cooking show one week before the quarter-final is going to turn the poor man into an absolute monster.
5. Jasmine, 23, London
Jasmine is a Scottish medical student. This would be the most interesting thing about her, except she is clearly so competitive that she used her bio to blow Aaron out of the water. Forget hotdogs; Jasmine thinks that “a big bowl of pasta” qualifies as a snack. Wild.
4. Jessika, 32, London
A few of the bios hint at someone’s showstopper going dramatically wrong in the upcoming season. My money is on the culprit being Jessika. A Cornish drag king, Jessika mentions that one of her showstoppers was “wildly heavy” and that she had to cover it in tempered chocolate in a panic.
3. Hassan, 30, South Yorkshire
I’ve got a very good feeling about Hassan. This is purely because he is an analytical research and development scientist by trade, so is statistically much less likely to get into a tizzy and dump a litre of milk into a bread dough or whatever. However, let me temper this enthusiasm by pointing out that, in his bio, he states that he’d like to make a book-shaped cake one day. You have to worry about a man whose flight of fancy involves baking something in the shape of a rectangle.
2. Pui Man, 51, Essex
Pui Man was born in Hong Kong and spends her free time distributing surplus supermarket food around her Essex community. As well as sounding extremely nice, she is also ambitious, stating that she wants to be the first Bake Off contestant ever to receive a hug from Paul Hollywood. Hopefully she can back up this ostentatious aspiration or, like Icarus before her, she will plummet back to Earth unhugged.
1. Nataliia, 32, East Yorkshire
Nataliia sounds like one of those fairytale Bake Off contestants who represent the very best of the country. A Ukrainian, she moved here a year before the war began, and her family followed as refugees. She has the potential to demonstrate that British people are more welcoming than headlines would have you believe. She also says that a cheese straw is an acceptable snack, which if nothing else clearly puts her head and shoulders above the pasta woman from earlier.
The Great British Bake Off is back on 2 September at 8pm on Channel 4
