What The Cameras Don't Show You On The Great British Baking Show

Who knew that watching people make sultana scones could be so riveting? "The Great British Baking Show," or "The Great British Bake Off" as it's called in its U.K. homeland, became nothing short of a phenomenon in the 2010s simply by pitting 12 amateur bakers against each other in a countryside tent, sprinkling in whimsical comedy, food history, and charming hand-drawn illustrations, too.

Recently returning for its 17th season, the hugely successful export has prided itself on being the most sedate and wholesome competitive reality show on television. But from the Baked Alaska disaster known as "Bingate" to the accidental theft, "Custardgate," it has comprised various on-air controversies over the years. Several incidents that never made it to air called its reputation into question, too. So how did a game of hide-and-seek spark a media outcry? What caused its family-friendly hosts to turn the air blue? And why was one particular episode accused of being offensive to an entire nation? Here's a look at a dozen developments that the cameras never showed.

"The Great British Baking Show" first came under scrutiny during its 2012 third season when it was accused of breaking editorial guidelines laid out by its original home network, the BBC. And its product placement of a specific brand of fridge was the root cause.

Indeed, the show's production company, Love Productions, was accused of accepting refrigerators from Smeg for free in return for visible advertising rather than purchasing them outright, flouting the rule that companies should pay market prices for such products. "We are working with Love Productions to put in place additional measures to ensure that sourcing and supply of equipment is clear in relation to our guidelines and a consistent approach is adopted in future," a BBC spokesperson told BBC News.

The network had only been alerted to the breach thanks to an eagle-eyed viewer who spotted the Smeg logo being prominently displayed nearly 40 times in a single episode and sent in a letter of complaint to the nation's most popular TV magazine, Radio Times. 

Paul Hollywood now appears to give his famous Hollywood handshake at every possible opportunity. But back in the 2013 fourth season of "The Great British Baking Show," the judge appeared to be selective. In fact, when it came to one particular female contestant, he was accused of being a little too selective.

Hollywood was deemed by many viewers to have shown favoritism toward eventual runner-up Ruby Tandoh. However, in an interview with Radio Times, he insisted that this wasn't the case, but in a manner which didn't exactly paint himself in the most flattering light. "Personally I think Kimberley's far prettier," he said (via Independent), referring to another contestant who also ended up making the final. "With all the love in the world, Ruby's not my type. But she's a great baker, one of the most talented bakers who has walked in that tent," Hollywood added during his backhanded compliment. 

Tandoh also dismissed the talk of bias. "It's easy to brush it off because I know how it was in the tent – and there was no favouritism," she remarked (via Mirror). "It was all very fair so that doesn't get to me very much." She soon made it clear that, contrary to reports, there was actually no love lost between her and the man she'd allegedly wrapped around her finger. Here's a look at some celebrity chefs who were involved in shady relationships.

It's hard to think of anything more British than the entire nation getting into a tizz over a Baked Alaska. That's exactly what happened in the 2014 fifth season of "The Great British Baking Show" when Diana Beard was accused of deliberately taking fellow contestant Iain Watters' dessert out of the refrigerator in a scandalous display of sabotage.

The incident, which essentially resulted in Watters leaving the competition after he threw away the melting meringue in the trash, even made the front pages of the newspapers as fans screamed injustice. However, Beard, who at the time was the show's oldest-ever contestant, told BBC Radio Shropshire that the incident dubbed "Bingate" wasn't as it seemed.

"I'm disappointed with the way it's been portrayed," Beard admitted. "I've been stitched up, haven't I? We were 12 amateur bakers, [there's] no prize money involved. Why would I sabotage Iain's Baked Alaska? This has made it look like some cutthroat competition. I think someone's culpable for the editing, really." The amateur baker, who was forced to pull out of the show before the next episode was filmed due to ill health, insisted that the dessert in question had only been in the open air for roughly 40 seconds.

The team working behind the scenes of "The Great British Baking Show" found themselves under scrutiny again in 2015 thanks to suspicious betting patterns relating to the winner of its sixth season.

Ladbrokes, one of the U.K.'s biggest bookmakers, announced it would be launching an investigation after over 40 new accounts, said to be linked to employees of the BBC and Love Productions, were registered within three days shortly before the 2015 premiere. Nearly 530 bets were placed on who would be crowned the victor of the show — who proved to be Season 6 winner Nadiya Hussain — which is famously pre-recorded months before airing.

"We flagged at the start of the series that we thought something smelled a bit strange," Ladbrokes' head of media David Williams told The Guardian. "We are looking into it further. If we feel we've had the equivalent of a custard pie thrown in our faces we will think twice about whether we should bet on markets like this again in the future." A Love Productions spokesperson expressed surprise that such bets were being run in the first place, but insisted there hadn't been any evidence of wrongdoing.

The original hosts of "The Great British Baking Show," Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins, have never exactly been the most rock and roll of comedy duos. Their careers have been built on the kind of cheeky but entirely inoffensive humor that can be shown to any audience, whatever the time of day. But it turns out that behind the scenes, they can be a little more potty-mouthed.

Admittedly, Giedroyc and Perkins' use of curse words was largely for altruistic reasons, as season four contestant Howard Middleton explained (via Mirror) to Smooth Spins Casino. "If they thought that one of the bakers was getting in a bit of a pickle or frustrated by something, they would swear so that footage couldn't be used," he said about the series, which goes out at the family-friendly prime time of 8 p.m. in the U.K. 

That wasn't all that Middleton, who enjoyed a six-week stint on the show, revealed. He also said that his season's judges Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry were essentially stealing a living: "I don't think you realise how little time they're actually in the tent. They will come and walk around to ask you what you're actually baking, and then they'll revisit for the judging. They might pop up for a few shots in between, but most of the time they are out of the tent, relaxing, watching box sets or whatever."

The cozy, cuddly world of "The Great British Baking Show" was shaken to its core in 2016 when it was poached by Channel 4 from its original home of the BBC. While presenters Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins and judge Mary Berry subsequently left the show out of loyalty to the BBC, judge Paul Hollywood chose the new network, a series of events which sent the tabloids into overdrive.

Ruby Tandoh, who placed runner-up on the fourth season in 2013, was one of countless names to have their say over the split. And there was no doubt she was firmly Team BBC. The baker, who has also called out chef Raymond Blanc, culinary writer Ella Mills, and the show's newest recruit, the double-life-leading Nigella Lawson, over the years, took to X to give Hollywood a piece of her mind.

"Ahhhhhhhh a peacocking manchild lingering wherever the money is," Tandoh wrote (via Hello!) about the judge who'd once been accused of favoring her. "I am shocked. This from a man who turned up to work revving a rental Lamborghini. Or was it a Ferrari. I don't remember, the air was thick w testosterone [sic]." Acknowledging she'd receive pushback over her outspoken comments, she added poetically, "We locked in battle with a mythic beast, both bright white and mahogany, man and baby, ego and terrible, terrible fragility all at once." Here's what happened between Marcela Valladolid and Hollywood.

As something of a national treasure, there were concerns that Prue Leith would be an adequate replacement for original judge Mary Berry following the dramatic "The Great British Baking Show" switch in 2017. The former was also apprehensive about taking on the role herself, although not because of the big shoes she had to fill. She was more worried about whether she'd get on with new colleague Paul Hollywood.

Speaking to The Sun, Leith admitted that she even phoned Berry before accepting the position to get the lowdown on the man with the famous handshake. "When Mary said she wasn't going with it, I'll confess I thought, 'I'd quite like that job.' So I rang her up before I took the job to find out about Paul. I was very anxious to know. She said he was lovely, so that was OK."

Leith was also unsure of new co-host Noel Fielding, although more for the fact that she actually didn't know who he was. "I've only heard of him because my children just adored him," she explained. "They don't watch 'Bake Off' but they do watch him." In the end, the foodie realized that the show's producers had pulled off a masterstroke. "I think what would have been fatal is if they had tried to simply do exactly the same thing and replace Mary with someone very like Mary and to replace Sue and Mel with similar cookie-girl comedians," she added.

It didn't take long for Noel Fielding to cause controversy on "The Great British Baking Show." In his first season in 2017, the funnyman was filmed hiding from co-host Sandi Toksvig in one of several humorous asides peppered throughout each episode. But his method sparked an outcry from parents who believed he was setting a dangerous example.

"The Mighty Boosh" star chose to take a break from the cameras in one of the tent's giant fridges in a scene which home network Channel 4 later posted on X with the caption, "Just when you thought [Noel Fielding] couldn't get any cooler..." Not everyone saw the funny side, though.

"Epic fail by Noel, don't hide in a fridge; one of the first lessons of safety I learned as a child," commented one disgruntled viewer. Another remarked, "You should never shut people in a fridge even for comic effect! Children are watching this!" In response to the dozens of similar grievances they'd received, media regulator OFCOM told Sky News, "We are assessing all complaints against the broadcasting code, before deciding whether or not to investigate." Luckily for the show, the inquiry seemed to have gone cold.

Just like co-host Noel Fielding, judge Prue Leith also caused an outcry during her first season on "The Great British Baking Show." But her controversy didn't arise from anything she did on camera. Instead, it was the perils of social media that got the restaurateur in hot water.

In 2017, Leith decided to tweet her congratulations to the season eight winner Sophie Faldo. The only problem was that the finale in which the latter was crowned was still hours away from premiering. The star had been in Bhutan on the day and had got confused about the exact time difference between the Asian nation and her U.K. homeland, resulting in one almighty, if entirely accidental, spoiler.

Leith, who offered an apology, later explained to the radio show "Desert Island Discs" (via Independent) how mortified she'd been at the faux pas. "It was absolutely awful," she said. "I was having a siesta in Bhutan and I picked up my phone and I saw a message from the production company who said, 'Don't forget to congratulate the winner after 10pm.' I looked at my watch and quickly tweeted 'bravo Sophie' and a text came whizzing in which just said, 'Eek eek it's tonight delete delete.'" Unfortunately, the tweet had already gone viral by the time it was removed, just 89 seconds after being posted. Here's a look at celebs who refuse to use social media.

Alongside Noel Fielding, Danish-born comedian Sandi Toksvig had the unenviable task of replacing the much-loved Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins as the hosts of "The Great British Baking Show" once it moved from the BBC to Channel 4 in 2017. But the consensus was that the unlikely pairing did a solid job, helping the phenomenon retain much of its audience across three seasons.

However, while viewers seemed to be enthused by her stint, Toksvig was bored beyond disbelief. When asked by Saga magazine about the advantages of getting older, the funnywoman responded, "I think you get better at knowing when to walk away. I know some people were surprised when I quit as presenter of 'The Great British Bake Off' in 2020, but I make no bones about the fact I did not enjoy it."

Toksvig wasn't kidding. In another interview on the "Stirring it up with Andi and Miquita Oliver" podcast (via HuffPost), Toksvig also admitted she didn't watch the show beforehand and hasn't watched it since, while expressing bafflement at why anyone would do so. "I mean, no disrespect to people, but watching meringue dry and being told how many different kinds there are, I honestly thought I was going out of my mind." Furthermore, Toksvig revealed that she gladly walked away from the biggest payday of her enduring career. Here's a look at scenes that almost made other reality stars quit.

After 10 seasons on air, "The Great British Baking Show" tried to mix things up a bit by including dishes that definitely weren't British. Throughout the early 2020s, producers incorporated episodes dedicated to the baked goods of Japan, Germany, and Mexico. Unfortunately, these themed weeks proved that cultural sensitivity wasn't the series' strong point.

Indeed, the show received a flood of complaints in 2022 following the Mexican diversion in which hosts Noel Fielding and Matt Lucas shook maracas and sported sombreros while adopting dodgy accents. The backlash was so strong that it put a damper on future international tributes. "We didn't want to offend anyone but the world has changed and the joke fell flat," executive producer Kieran Smith explained in a chat with The Guardian.

Prue Leith and Paul Hollywood, who were judges at the time, have both expressed their surprise at such negative reactions. The latter insisted that having just returned from Mexico three weeks before shooting, he'd tried his best to make the challenges as authentic as possible. The former, meanwhile, was adamant that they had nothing but love for the countries and cultures in question. "The thing about 'Bake Off' is that it absolutely represents inclusivity and diversity and tolerance and togetherness," she added. "So the idea that we were set out to insult anybody is ridiculous," per the Independent.

Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins aren't the only "The British Baking Show" hosts to give the editing team a little more work. Instead of deliberately swearing to help out flustered contestants, though, Noel Fielding appears to cause havoc simply for his own amusement.

In an interview with Metro, Season 11 runner-up Laura Adlington revealed the funnyman was forever getting reprimanded by producers for living up to his man-child persona. One particular stunt during the technical round really got their goat. "He used to play a game where he'd steal the pictures of the bakers and he'd swap them around just for a laugh," Adlington recalled. "The producers would then have to watch the footage back to see whose was whose so the judges couldn't give us the wrong feedback."

While the behind-the-scenes team appeared to find Fielding's behavior testing, the contestants loved it. "He's so funny, he's like a big kid really," Adlington gushed, adding that "The Mighty Boosh" star was also scolded for everything from wasting time to climbing on top of the fridge.