London - The new series of The Great British Bake Off is currantly (geddit, oh stop it) being filmed somewhere in England.
As always in the Bake Off Tent there will be tears, there will be tantrums, there will be soufflés that fail to rise and flourless tortes that fail to fall.
But as series four of the popular show gets under way, there will be something else, too. Something very new. For along with the cinnamon-scented buns and the aroma of fruity tarts, there will be, for the first time ever, the whiff of scandal.
For Bake Off presenter Paul Hollywood has just left his wife amid rumours of a close friendship with a fellow presenter on the US version of the hit show. The split between Hollywood and his 49-year-old wife, Alexandra, after 14 years of marriage, came to light after it was discovered he had grown close to 34-year-old Marcela Valladolid, his Mexican co-star on the American version of Bake Off.
Winsome Marcela has long been trumpeted as a key exponent of Mexican cuisine on US telly.
To this end, she marinates chickens in tequila, stuffs all sorts into her tacos and has spent a fortune on making herself a star in America. Now she has also left her own spouse - and seems to have become embroiled in a batch of not so glutinous-free baking.
Clips of the American show reveal an undoubted chemistry between the unlikely couple: he the burly baker with the silver fox appeal; she the doll-sized, doe-eyed salsa expert. And what has Paul Hollywood got to say about his foxy co-star?
“She has exceptional taste buds,” he cooed recently. Ugh!
Quicker than you could say ready, steady, barf, the man who invented patisserie porn had moved out of his marital home in Kent to a nearby studio flat. And we all know what that means. No mention of soggy bottoms from now until the end of GBBO series four, if you don’t mind.
Support for Hollywood came from an unlikely source - undisputed national treasure Mary Berry.
In defence of her friend and Bake Off co-presenter, she said: “You can’t blame him, things happen and boys will be boys. If a boy goes into a cake shop, he will try every cake, whereas a girl will just stick to the one shelikes.”
Mary’s remarks seemed like something from another century - which is because they are. Few women of a younger and more equal generation would ever claim that Paul Hollywood’s behaviour was blameless - or to be indulged as just something that men do, so get over it.
Yet 78-year-old Berry, who has been married for 47 years herself, also urged him to save his marriage by “apologising and moving on”.
The thing is, Mary’s generation of stalwart wives simply did not divorce. And perhaps there is wisdom buried deep in her words of support; something to be said for weathering the storm of infidelity, rather than throwing a lifetime of love away.
Of course, that decision rests solely with Mrs Hollywood, and she might not be in the mood for any half-baked words of contrition. When I met Paul Hollywood last year, I was struck by something he said. Which was that he and his wife had never really had a conversation about his becoming a housewives’ favourite; a stud-muffin baking pin-up who was adored by millions of women.
Not really mentioned.
That was odd. Why had they not talked about it? One conclusion could be that even then it was already becoming a problem between them. Only time will tell.
But how disappointing that yet another married foodie celebrity has been unfaithful. What is it with these men?
Rick Stein, Marco Pierre White, Keith Floyd, John Burton Race, Tom Aikens, Gordon Ramsay, Heston Blumenthal to name a few? All of them have fallen, at one time or another, to the same kinds of temptation. In Heston Blumenthal’s case, almost exactly the same.
In 2011, after 22 years of marriage, Blumenthal ditched his wife Zanna - whom he often credited as “the reason for my success” - and moved out of the family home in Berkshire they shared with their three teenage children.
He took up with Suzanne Pirret, a sexy cookery writer who has been described as America’s answer to domestic goddess Nigella Lawson.
In both instances, wives who had stood by their husbands through all the difficult years, when money was tight, when they were trying to raise a family and make the big time, were dropped like sacks of flour when fame came a-calling.
So Paul Hollywood is not the first or the last celebrity cook to achieve great wealth and success in mid-life, then suddenly shed his family like a blancmange mould.
It is so sad, but we must never underestimate the hormonal folly of the newly famous middle-aged man. Of a husband who suddenly finds himself promoted from back-burner to front runner; who becomes a flaming object of desire among young, attractive and determined women who are no respecters of his wife.
Their behaviour might be just as reprehensible, but Paul Hollywood’s flight from the home fires shows once more the perilous effect that celebrity can have in unbalancing a happy marriage.- Daily Mail