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For fans of The Great British Bake Off, today is officially one of the most exciting days of the year: the line-up for this year’s series has just been announced. Yessssssss!
Will one of them be the next Nadiya? Which one will be the first to feature in a meme? Whose cookbook will hit the shelves first? Who’ll be responsible for the most innuendos? Who’ll get the first Hollywood Handshake? We’re unbelievably excited to find out. But we can’t tell just by looking at them, so let’s discover a little more about them…
Joining Paul, Prue, Sandi and Noel in the famous white tent this year will be: 47-year-old Jon, who works as a blood courier #notallheroeswearcapes; 33-year-old Briony, who is a YouTube-taught baker (how very modern); full-time dad Dan; and 56-year-old Terry, who will be bringing along a few ingredients from the allotment and microbrewery he has at home in the West Midlands.
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Imelda, a 33-year-old from Northern Ireland, will also be battling for the GBBO crown (figuratively – it’s usually a cake stand that they win), along with 27-year-old Kim-Joy, who’ll be bringing flavours from her Malaysian-Chinese mum’s heritage to the tent.
In fact, there’ll be a whole lot of Asian influences in this year’s Bake Off, as there’s a whole contingent of bakers who grew up in India joining the gang; there’s 30-year-old Rahul, 29-year-old project manager Ruby (we’re intrigued to know if she uses project management tools when baking), and 30-year-old Antony, who describes himself as a ‘Bollywood baker’.
Now, we sincerely hope that the judges embrace this, as we would very much like to see Paul’s Bollywood dancing. Can we make #PaulBollywood happen?
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We can also expect to see French influences in GBBO 2018, thanks to 26-year-old Maron, who says Bake Off was one of the first things she watched after moving to the UK (can you remember what it was like to discover the show for the first time? We totally understand her excitement!) and 60-year-old Karen, who’s from West Yorkshire, but learnt to bake while living in France.
Last but not least, there’s 30-year-old Luke from Sheffield, who’s a civil servant by day and a house and techno DJ by night. Where does he find the time to bake? At the decks? Now that’s a DJ set we’d like to see.
We’re so so ready to laugh with Noel, cry with Sandi and salivate over all the bakes – and there’s just one week to go, with the new series starting on Tuesday August 28th on Channel 4 at 8pm!
And remember: #PaulBollywood.