It’s half time. If someone would be so kind as to pass around the candied oranges, let’s take a breather and reflect on what the first six weeks of the greatest in British Baking has given us. If there’s been one consistency of the Bake Off this year, it’s been inconsistency. Ladbrokes (or your own more favoured betting shop) must be finding it a nightmare.

Those who shone like tempered chocolate in the first few episodes have since fallen by the wayside. But this is a good thing. Paul and Mary have brutally shaven away the mavericks and the chancers, and we are now left with a pretty solid half dozen as the competition hots up. Gone are the ‘unpredictable’ bakers who banish gluten in favour of rice flour (Howard), or execute their baking with the precision of a rocket scientist (Robert, who is actually a rocket scientist), the runt of the litter who can’t quite hold it together (Ali). So what are we left with? Frances’s flavours are finally pushing through her sometimes overwrought designs, but not that convincingly. Can’t she and say, Kimberley, who’s flavour combinations seem to pack a punch, team up and create an indestructibly stylish AND substantial cake?

Ruby’s self-deprecation is making me want to punch the television screen. She’s so that type of person who revises in secret and pretends to have done NO work, then comes out with the highest marks. Glenn is SUCH a chancer. He’s been lucky to narrowly dodge the chop on more than one occasion, and his time must surely be coming to a close, musn’t it? No, I can’t say that. Inconsistency is key in this series, so you never know, he might be the one to receive the couronne of glory.

If I were a gambling man, my money would be on Beca. Not following any logic, as this series seems to have thrown that out the window, but for sheer fondness. I find her the most sincere, and she really seems to take on what advice Paul and Mary choose to impart. But good luck to them all, at the moment it seems any one of them could come out on top.

Lily Dessau