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 don't feel you are treating this with the gravity it requires Whole of the Spoon.

The nation has been a quiver with indignation. Apathy be damned when there are retro puddings and a sense of fair play at stake!

His cake looked lovely but Kirsty said nothing about the taste only to mention the recipe on their web site. She used to be good but her excitable gabbling these days seems to show a disregard for whether we can understand her. I breathe a sigh of relief when she is not on and someone with a better diction and delivery is on.

The lady has left the show. She seemingly had a fall days after the ice cream situation and never went back for the next expisode. She has been left with no/very little sense of taste/smell.

From what I understand its not being put down to the reactions after this weeks episode because she would not have known way back in May how people would react. I suspect however she had a good idea of what would happen when the episode aired and her fall was a good excuse to back out.

I read somewhere that there was quite a lot of upset after the recording amongst the contestants with a number saying Iain shouldn't have gone. So Diana may well have got at least an inkling.

Cariads - she had a freak fall that severed her olfactory nerve (according to quotes in The Scotsman that I can't link to). Hence the - perhaps permanent - loss of taste and smell.

I very much doubt that she was thinking of it as a convenient excuse to quit GBBO.

She had the fall/faint when she was with the GBBO team the night before the next episode was to be filmed.

Things have definitely escalated!

Tansie

That's good

Poor woman. Losing your sense of smell and taste must be dreadful, especially for someone who has taken such pleasure in food.

I'd assumed (maybe wrongly) that the editing was done at the end of the whole series (to put us off track as to the winner etc.). So, as Diana had had to drop out due to her fall, this episode was edited to show her in a bad light because the production team knew she'd no further role in the series.

It's known that contestants have to wear the same clothing for each episode so filming can be "cut and pasted". I'm only going to trust what I see the contestants present at the end of each "bake" in future!

Tansie

Yes I too am a bit wary of the BBCs motives. I don't trust them, and there seems to be an undercurrent that is not as light and airy as that first series. Even Mary and Paul have a darker undercurrent.

undercurrant

thanks Curly ;)

On R4 this morning they said that Iain now says he doesn't believe the pud was out of the freezer for only 40s.

Is somebody stirring things up...?

Shadowstar you are correct and that was a daft thing for me to say in hindsight, and after reading more info that wasn't available when I posted.

Perhaps as the producers knew Diana was leaving before they edited this weeks show, they edited it less favorably than they might have done if she didn't have to leave? She became more "disposable" to them and they decided to amp it up at her expense?

Wow 24 pages long I just noticed mumsnets edit it made me laugh

I'd never seen Bake Off until this series. I thought Mel and Sue were great presenters and that it was a lovely show where the worst thing that could happen was Mary Berry giving a contestant a steely gaze and bemoaning a soggy bottom. Even my son, who is 3.9, likes it! It is a real shame that even contestants on a gentle show like this can fall victim to Twitter trolls.

If Sue Perkins is to be believed then 40 seconds couldn't have made much difference to Iain's Baked Alaska. Perhaps Diana should have either put Iain's back in the freezer or told him as soon as she'd taken it out, but they were probably all hot and flustered and it's hard to know how they have edited it. I hope she recovers from her fall. A bit of a storm in a cake tin anyway!

That's what I meant PartTime - you put it more clearly than me!

Only watched it last night - spent yesterday desperately avoiding all social media/news! DH and I were horrified - to us it was a moot point as to how long it was actually out, the thing that infuriated us both (DH shouting at tv when it's not about football?? ) was that she put it on the end of her workbench. To me that's akin to hiding it. I don't care if she "forgot" or whatever excuse - if there's no room in the freezer, take it over to him, don't hide it amongst the debris on your own bench and "forget" about it!! Cheat cheat cheat.

She did apologise to him. It was the first thing she said. Anyway she has more than got her " punishment" as she got ill. I like Ian but it was " sort of unacceptable" to chuck it out. He couldn't handle the kitchen.

I think the "unacceptable behaviour" was because of the anger and frustration from feeling (rightly or wrongly) that he'd been sabotaged. I suspect that if that had not happened, but the ice cream hadn't set because of a mistake on his part, he may well have reacted differently and at least saved something to be judged. For that reason, I think it was unfair that he was eliminated. Who knows? Maybe he'll be back on next week's episode.