Through Ruby Coloured Glasses

In this cultural moment of clean eating, wellness and influencers, Ruby Tandoh has stepped up as a gutsy, radical advocate for eating whatever you want.

- Nadia Bailey

The Great British Bake Off is a strange sort of reality TV show, trading in nostalgia at its most twee and food porn at its most sugar-coated. The contestants are earnest. The hosts hover. What little rivalry there is has about as much bite as a Bakewell tart. In other words, Bake Off is an escapist fantasy – and an unlikely launching pad, perhaps, for a young, queer, mixed-race woman who’s concerned with putting her politics firmly centre-plate.

Ruby Tandoh was, by her own account, “a nervous and shy and insecure person” when she competed on series four of The Great British Bake Off in 2013. Then 21, she applied for the show simply because she was bored and needed a project.

“Even applying for Bake Off was out of character for me,” she says. “I know this is a really backwards way of doing it, but I thought, ‘If I apply for this competition, then I’ll learn to bake’.”

In the tent, Tandoh distinguished herself as a talented baker and a brutal perfectionist. She exhibited a dislike of fussiness and an emotional, rather than technical, approach to cooking. Other contestants measured their bakes against the criteria set by judges Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood; Tandoh seemed to set herself against an impossibly high internal standard that she could never hope to reach. She was prone to crying in frustration when a bake went sideways, or when she received anything less than glowing feedback. This, along with her long limbs and telegenic looks, rubbed many viewers of the show the wrong way. Bake Off may trade in old-fashioned British civility, but the same can’t be said of its audience.