The Great British Celebrity Bake Off review: Needs more Big Narstie

A shame that the grime artist has to leave before the showstopper challenge, though Sandi Toksvig makes for an apt substitute

So, Jess Phillips then. Labour member of parliament for Birmingham Yardley and now the recipient of the Winner’s Apron in episode three of Channel 4’s Great Celebrity Bake Off for Stand Up to Cancer. It might have been more fun if she had ended up as the honourable member for Eccles, say, or Dundee, rather than her native Brum, but then you can’t have your cake and eat it, can you? Phillips says that joining Bake Off is “like going to Narnia or something”. However, she is yet to face Russell Brand, of “cosmic vagina” biscuit fame, in the final. So we shall see.

Phillips, in the current climate, may never make leader of the Labour Party, or achieve her childhood ambition to be prime minister (I’d vote for her), but she will at least always have that memento of her time spent in the Bake Off tent in the company of some flour, eggs, Sandi Toksvig, Noel Fielding, Prue Leith, Paul Hollywood and her friendly competitors Johnny Vegas (comedian), Katarina Johnson-Thompson (Olympian) and Big Narstie (grime artist).

Narstie has to drop out before the final “showstoppers” round due to illness, and in his stead comes Toksvig. Or “little Narstie” as she is predictably, if inaccurately, nicknamed. (She makes a competent banana loaf).

Maybe if Narstie went into politics, like Phillips, he might one day end up as the Right Honourable Sir Big Narstie MP. That would be fun. At any rate, I was quite sorry to see him retire early. He is a jolly sort of chap, and, as you might expect, a bit of maverick around the place.

In the technical pork pie challenge, for example, he opts to make two very large giant chilli-packed patty style affairs rather than the mandated six neatly crimped conventional pies. “Rasta pies,” he calls them. Obviously, he was never going to win with such an avant-garde approach, even though Leith and Hollywood both agree his spicy delicacy is delicious, well-baked and substantial.

Indeed, Narstie distinguishes himself in the opening “signature” challenge, baking 18 shaped and decorated shortbread biscuits. He has quite a good theme for this – dog biscuits.

They are doggy shaped, yes, but the icing turns out to be a bit of a disaster so he just calls it “dog poo” and curls his topping out on them anyway, ingeniously making the best of a rather messy denouement. “They’ve been rolling around in it!” is the inventive rationalisation.

Narstie’s biccies taste good, but he’s mixed his mix far too smooth, so the texture is “like bubble gum” whereas shortbread really needs to be a bit grimy, so to speak.

Vegas also finds himself compromised. He prices a superb showstopper – a portrait of himself in cake – with a heavily alcoholic theme (Guinness-flavoured sponge) but his previous attempts had been just a touch underbaked, so he is unlucky in the end. Maybe just as well, though, given that he intimated: “The big tip is I’m not washing me hands for three days and I think you’ll get a taste of life in the pastry.”

First past the post, therefore, is Phillips, the most consistent performer. Her showstopper is a feminist production, featuring her in suffragette colours waving a banner reading “Smash the patriarchy”. Not “pastryarchy”, which must be Leith and Hollywood.

It also features large spongy boobs (her words, not mine), and her trademark gigantic hoop earrings. She describes one of her successful bakes as “like winning a general election”. Maybe. In the meantime she’ll just have to go back to stirring trouble in the Labour Party.

As Bake Offs go, this one has excellent ingredients – amusing personalities, Noel’s especially outlandish mystery cartoon dog-themed shirt, Sandi actually doing some baking – yet the whole thing feels a bit bland: needs a bit more Narstieness, I think.