BAKED ALASKA-GATE [edited by MNHQ to say that this thread contains many, many GBBO spoilers. Many Many Many]

[amotherfuckingquiche]

She took Iain's ice cream out of the freezer did she not?!

I am waiting for the extra slice. If it turns out to be editing, I will be complaining to the BBC and potentially the regulator (need to re-read their rules). The woman is being vilified, and they knew this would happen. If she did nothing wrong then that is just truly awful.

Btw, tip for anyone complaining to the bbc, always follow the option to complain a second time when they reply to your first complaint. My understanding is that this causes more serious escalation, especially if lots of people do it...

I don't watch GBBO but did hear Diana this morning in a radio interview. She says that the programme was edited to make it look like something it was not. Iain apparently rang Diana at home a few days ago to warn her it was all about to kick off on social media. Apparently he said he does not blame her for him losing at all - it was his own fault.

I feel sorry for her. You go into these things all innocently and find yourself in the middle of something you could never have imagined. I once did a personal interview to the local press about an issue affecting our family only for them to turn us into something 'tragic' which was not the story I had given them at all. Lesson learned ans I expected Diana feels the same.

Quenelle is spot on.

What quenelle said. Children are being bombed in Gaza, journalists beheaded in Syria. Save your rage for something that actually matters.

I haven't seen last night's episode yet, but if the edit was engineered to create extra drama - on top of a contestant freaking out and storming off, which presumably couldn't have been predicted - by demonising another contestant, I reckon it will actually significantly damage the calm, kindly GBBO 'brand'.

Pretty much everyone who watches it does so because they don't want Masterchef/Gordon Ramsay-style drama, but basically nice people making nice cakes in a bunting-draped pastel tent. We all know deep down that the benign atmosphere is artificially created by the casting and editing - Danny the medic's blog from one season ago is good on this - but this seems like a mistake on the part of the production team.

If Iain in fact came back gracefully and (I gather) presented the bin for judging with no hard feelings, why edit it to vilify Nancy or Diana, or to make it ambiguous whose fault it was?

What struck me as odd when watching last night was that Diana showed no guilt or any emotion at all around Iain's departure. I thought that was weird seeing as I'd just watched it clearly be her fault. It's obvious now that the reason she showed no guilt was because she had no idea that any of it was supposed to be her fault.

She'd got pissed off at Iain's stuff in her freezer, took it out (if it was her?), called him over, he collected it (she said 'sorry, it's on my bench' in such a blasé way that she couldn't have possibly thought it was a major issue). Did he then put it in another freezer? You'd have thought so? Anyway he goes off, chats to Sue, spills his ice cream etc. Diana in the meantime is fretting over her swan. Then in the background Iain bins his bake. Some of the contestants didn't even realise as Richard had to tell them so he clearly didn't blame Diana as he did it or anything.
Chetna also struggled with her ice cream so there's no reason to think anything unusual had happened with Iain. The contestants aren't dissecting what happened and Diana is oblivious. She is praised for her swan, talks to the camera about how pleased she is and goes home happy with a good week. No idea that she's a supervillain, because she didn't sabotage anything, didn't leave anyone's ice cream on the side for hours, didn't take anything out without telling them.

I think they had to eliminate Iain because if they kept him in and did two next week like they did with John, then the solution to any bad bake would be to bin it rather than present it. This would also only make sense as a course of action if no one in the tent knew it was supposed to be sabotage.

It has to be the edit. No one's actions after make sense otherwise.

Let's not start comparing this to what is happening in the world.

Yes, calm and nice is the GBBO unique selling point. People won't react kindly to that format being tinkered with.

Oh, and I believe that on top of the initial twelve competitors, there are two waiting in the wings in reserve. What kinds of situation (other than, say illness or bereavement) would mean the reserves were used? If Freezergate had happened in episode one, might Iain have been substituted rather than booted off?

That sounds like a good summation to me noblegiraffe.

Fuck - imagine what the Beeb are going to do in the edit of the next Sewing Bee? Nooooooooooooooooo!

Daily Mash says this: www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/arts-entertainment/piss-off-you-hipster-git-says-mary-berry-2014082889964

I was waiting for her to step up and take the blame. I could not believe she didn't.

OK so she felt his cake was in the wrong freezer. Why didn't she ask him to move it? By taking it out and putting it on the bench and not tellng him, she caused the cake to melt. Nancy colluded because she knew what had happened and did not speak up.

I was disgusted by both of them.

I thought Ian was actually very restrained. He did not formally complain or have a go at them and they just got away with it completely.

I think Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood should take retrospective action - re- instate Ian and punish Diana and Nancy. Let's start a campaign!

Also there were people who were present at the time whom I would have expected to call foul play if that was the case. Sue Perkins I would have thought would tell Mary & Paul what really happened in the chat afterwards if not at the actual judging, as she has always seemed to me to be fair. Also I would have expected the contestants to have told them when it was clear Iain was leaving, as neither Iain nor Diana are a serious threat to any of them who think they are in with a chance of winning.

Its unlikely however it is possible that Diana was a stone cold saboteur last night who brazened it out. But perhaps the BBC are leaning towards a dreadful Big Brother style programme & want us to believe the contestants are at each others' throats.

But having said that, I would have thought if Diana was innocent & totally free of suspicion her reaction to Iain would have been apologetic & horrified once she had realised it was still on the side. The fact that she reprimanded him for using her freezer seems odd to me, unless she called his attention to it immediatley & it wasn't left sitting around.

I feel so sorry for Diana, I hope she is OK.

Taking another contestant's ice cream (or anything else) out of a freezer without telling them you are doing that was sabotage. OK maybe it shouldn't have been in there but it would only have taken 5 seconds to shout "someone has put a baked alaska in the wrong freezer we are removing it as there isn't room for our stuff and you have your own freezer space"
If they were sharing frrezers he maybe had been allocated space in that one anyway, it seems odd to use it if he hadn't as i presume he just had the one pudding to freeze.
The women who removed it and didn't tell him were nasty.

it would only have taken 5 seconds to shout "someone has put a baked alaska in the wrong freezer we are removing it as there isn't room for our stuff and you have your own freezer space"

How do you know this didn't happen?

They did tell him. It didn't show him rummaging in the freezer going 'where's my ice cream?' It showed him walking over asking 'where is it?'. He knew before he got there there that they'd done something with it because it was in their way.

I'm new to GBBO and have been really enjoying it. I didn't know about the Jo Brand show so looking forward to catching up on them too.

I really hope the producers don't give in to the temptation to start 'spicing things up'. It's possible that they are under pressure, though, to justify the move to BBC1. Perhaps they think the gentle, no-controversy format works for BBC2 viewers but not BBC1 viewers?

Fuck! What will they make Victoria Coren do to justify moving Only Connect from BBC4 to BBC2?

In my opinion, the producers set the contestants up.

They were using domestic freezers - these would have been struggling to get down to temperature, in the sweltering Bake-Off tent anyway. They needed blast chillers, like the ones the contestants get to use on Australian Masterchef.

They didn't have enough freezer space for all the contestants' creations - why else did Ian have to put his in the other contestants' freezer?

The producers had to know that inadequate freezer capacity and temperature was going to cause melty alaskas, and stress amongst at least some of the contestants - I think they were banking on that. The whole thing with Diana was just a bonus.

I also suspect that, because of the woefully inadequate freezers, Ian's icecream was pretty soft when Diana took it out - it explains, for me, how it got so soft when it was only out for 40 seconds.

I have to say too, that I was a bit about Ian's icecream anyway - it might have tasted delicious - but grey icecream with black bits in? Never going to win any beauty contests!

Frankly, even if Diana had deliberately taken the ice-cream out of the freezer and had then deliberately melted it with a blow torch, it still wouldn't excuse all this anti-Diana vilification.

(And I'm of the opinion that it's Iain's fault he lost because he threw his dessert away, not because someone else took his ice-cream out of the freezer)

It's a bloody dessert. Not some sort of major crime. It's been blown completely out of proportion and poor Diana doesn't deserve all this abuse.

areyoutheregod - we are allowed to comment on more mundane things as well you know!

You're allowed to comment and I frequently do on all sorts of banal things - it's the people staggering around gaping in outrage that is possibly somewhat ott

oh they so needed blast freezers - I was at the Smegs or whatever the retro looking things they were using were.

I fancy a bit of baked alaska now. I'm sure the editing played a part in how it looked but still, you don't touch other people's puds! Although if I was panicking over getting my pud in the freezer and someone elses frog-spawn ice cream was in there, I'd probablt yoik it out and dumo it on the side (but I would yell 'WHOSE IS THIS??? ITS IN MY SPACE!' Then most likely find a corner for it.

I may be loud and grumpy, but also considerate.