Oh Crumbs! Ladbrokes suspends Great British Bake Off market

90% of all punters betting on the show placed the maximum amount possible on the same baking hopeful.

Since Monday, the bookmaker has taken a number of bets for one contestant whose odds started at 12/1 and were reduced to 6/1, 3/1 and then evens.

Professional musician Stuart Henshall was the first contestant to be sent home from the show this year.

The 39-year-old, formerly of Tea Garden Lane, made his first TV appearance last night and sailed through the first round, with a gin and tonic Madeira cake, a walnut cake and showstopping black forest gateau.

That means more than 1.5 million people will be heading to stores in a Great British Bake Off-inspired frenzy of baking purchases.

Generally it seemed that those who made too much of an effort to be different were ultimately unsuccessful with Stu being the prime example after his chocolate Madeira with a lime and rum glaze failed to impress Mary and Paul.

Airing at 8pm on BBC One, watch the amateur bakers get put through their paces to create the sweet treats (and hold your breath as Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood put them to the taste test).

I couldn’t produce a show-stopping cake to save my life, or rather this would be the only circumstance in which I might try – if someone was holding a revolver to my temple.

A nurse from Berkshire who is originally from the Philippines, Alvin’s two children are going to inherit the many recipes and techniques he is always scribbling down.

Over the past year I’ve had to endure the likes of Hair, The Great Painting Challenge and last week’s BBQ Champ all because of the success of one other programme.

Speaking about being the first baker to be evicted he said: “I felt disappointed in myself initially after leaving in the first episode, as I felt I didn’t perform as well as I could”. The judge told him: “The flavours are all wrong, really”.

This 53-year-old accountant from Preston has been baking for 40 years and regularly visits Michelin star restaurants with her husband.

We all know our MSPs are willing to engage in a fight to the death to secure voters and recently they proved that their baking skills are yet another tool to add to their already considerable political arsenal. “I quite like to bake a good showstopper, a centrepiece”, she says.

He said: “It will be weird if I am recognised”.

On which note, I think Sandy may well be a shoe-in for a job with Stu after she revealed: “I can be a bit random, I can be making a cake and you’ll have a meat pie by the time I’ve finished”.