The TV chef is rumoured to be replacing Prue Leith on The Great British Bake Off. She is exactly what the show needs right now.
When Prue Leith announced that she was leaving The Great British Bake Off, on the basis that "I'm 86 for goodness sake," there was really only one figure who could realistically replace her. And so it has come to pass. Believe press rumours and the next Bake Off judge is Nigella Lawson.
If it's true, this is the best possible call for a series that - if we're honest - has lost its way. Bake Off has become slightly long in the tooth over the last half decade or so. This is partly to do with talent churn (over the years we've lost Mel and Sue, Mary Berry, Sandi Toksvig, Matt Lucas and now Prue Leith) and partly because the series is struggling to keep its challenges fresh.
If it repeats the safe old formula that made it popular in the first place, it risks becoming stale. If it keeps ramping up the difficulty, then it risks alienating the home baker with bewildering levels of conceptual avant-garde science. If it tries doing national weeks again, as it did when it dressed everyone in sombreros and shook maracas during its ill-advised Mexican week in 2022, then its viewership will die of second-hand embarrassment.
What The Great British Bake Off really needs now is a combination of talents that is very hard to come by. A new judge needs to have true expertise grounded in decades of experience. They also need to have forensic intelligence and enough full-beam charisma to paper over the cracks in the format.
There are some figures who can achieve some of this. TV chef Lorraine Pascale would be great but, judging by her Instagram, now primarily works in the skincare industry. Chef and author Ravneet Gill has a level of pastry expertise that would rival Paul Hollywood, but doesn't have the right level of name recognition. There is also the possibility, since the show has been going long enough, that Bake Off could have cast one of its own alumni as a judge, perhaps by hiring the show's first winner Edd Kimber or its sixth, Nadiya Hussain. The problem with this, however, is that they aren't Nigella Lawson.
Nigella has been at the forefront of home cookery for almost 30 years, since How to Eat was published in 1998. She's been the face of it since one year later, when Nigella Bites debuted on Channel 4. With every subsequent release she has only consolidated her position. Now in her mid-60s, she has become exactly what the series needs right now. She is spectacularly British, and manages to balance the sort of familiarity that will reassure existing viewers with a level of international first-name recognition that might even end up growing the audience.
The only time I have seen Nigella Lawson at work in the flesh was during a press day for the short-lived Channel 4 cookery contest series The Taste over a decade ago. And while her co-judges Ludo Lefebvre and Anthony Bourdain were forceful and garrulous respectively, Nigella managed to be both at once. Initially so haughty that even the thought of making eye contact with her terrified the life out of me, she then flicked on the charm so devastatingly that I turned into a puddle. I have photographic evidence which bears the sweat patches to prove it.
This is exactly the combination Bake Off requires. While Paul Hollywood typically gets pegged as the tough judge, the truth is that Mary Berry and Prue Leith both had a steely, imperious core that was just as immovable. They were lovely, of course, but go and pause any old episode and you'll see flinty looks in their eyes. They both demanded that you impress them. Nigella is the same. She is formidably intelligent with high expectations. Imagine serving her a collapsed soufflé. Imagine the hurt and disappointment in her eyes.
In truth, The Great British Bake Off is much closer to its end than its beginning. Like fellow warhorses MasterChef and The Apprentice, it has started to lumber on exhaustedly in recent years and will soon be destined for the knacker's yard. But if it's going to go out, it deserves to go out as strongly as possible. Nigella Lawson is the only woman for the job.