We stand together So the New Great British Bake Off trailer at Channel 4 has been released last week and I for one felt a warm and quite proud moment seeing my Bread Lion there.

The Telegraph likened it to a ” doughy olive branch saying “Yes, we know it’s a bit of upheaval but things won’t be changing much”. Using the lion in the trailer may have been a nod to the show’s format and that it is still in safe hands. The chintz may have changed , but the bakers will still be wide-eyed and nervous on their first day. They will be people whose love of home baking has led them to put pen to paper and try to be part of the baking institution that is the Great British Bake Off.

My family has watched it from the very beginning, when the tent went around the UK pitching up with passers-by watching at the windows, where Paul Hollywood asked Miranda Gore Brown ‘ are they cupcakes?’ and we all gasped.

There will be familiar feelings of tension when the bakes don’t go right , when time is going too fast and we will still want the bakers we connect with to go through next week. We will still shout at the tv  ‘ come on’  and then take a breath when they walk to the front and hope they not drop their bakes. We will get to know the bakers as they stay in the tent, but this time alongside the new presenters and we will judge them, make comments about them, but the Tent will give them their protection, because we love the Tent, and all that it represents. The tent is the symbol of coming together, and just as the GBBO trailer states, “we all stand together, sink or swim”.  Baking is about coming together, making mistakes and getting back up from them.

So here’s to the start of the new series coming soon!