When we first heard that The Mighty Boosh’s Noel Fielding - a surreal encapsulation of 2006 inside the body of that lad from The Charlatans - was gonna be presenting Great British Bake Off we were skeptical. Mel and Sue replaced by the objectively-alright Sandi Toksvig and the divisive-at-best Fielding? We could smell trouble like a burning cake base. But, as it turns out, they’re doing alright guiding what has been a distinctively B-grade series using nothing but their silly charm and some weak-sauce puns.
But on Tuesday night, shit really hit the… uh, the fridge.
In the episode, Sandi Toksvig opened the fridge to reveal her wacky goth colleague huddled up inside. “Bakers,” Fielding then announced, as if nowt strange was happening, “you are halfway through your challenge. Halfway through.” And then Toksvig closed the door on him.
There he is, look: doing a joke.
It was innocuous enough to most viewers but GBBO attracts a very particular sort, doesn’t it?
#GBBO Great British Bake Off - Noel Fielding hiding and being shut in a fridge by Sandi Toksvig. Great message to all the kids watching.
— Wayne Martin (@waynem207) September 12, 2017
#C4 How stupid can you be ?
— neil watkins (@welshope) September 12, 2017
You should never shut people in a Fridge even for comic effect ! Children are watching this ! #GBBO
Well done @channel4 - showing a man hiding in a fridge. Children have died doing that. Not funny. #GBBO
— BennettsFieldBunny (@BennettsField) September 12, 2017
#GBBO idiotic to show shutting someone in a fridge however funny it looks ...children copy #stupidstunt
— H (@countrymousie) September 13, 2017
The Great British Bake Off 2017 A show watched by 1000s of children & talentless @noelfielding11 hid in a fridge #irresponsible#GBBO2017
— Nikky Mills (@Saffyre) September 12, 2017
When I was seven or eight, someone dumped a fridge outside my house. My mum - my dear, scared old mum - sat me down to extol just how extremely dead I would be if I dared to get into that fridge; how if I got inside there as a joke, I would be stuck forever and would die: frozen and scared and alone.
But that was my mum, a woman who’s scared of everything. And while people on the box owe it to audiences to not encourage them to do anything too dangerous, we have to say this is probably not the deadliest shit to be complaining about. You might as well be complaining to Ofcom about the amount of sugar and butter these bakers are putting into their cakes:
“how dare Flo,” happybikergirl270 would write on Twitter, “put so much butter into her icing. children are watching! children die of heart disease all the time! #irresponsible #banthebutter @jamieoliver.”
As for Fridgegate, Ofcom received 24 complaints which could lead to a full investigation.
“We will assess these complaints before deciding whether or not to investigate,” a spokesperson told Digital Spy.
(Images: Channel 4)
