Hold the front page
Lemon drizzle cake/bbc.co.uk
Now I may not be a Great British Bake Off viewer, and I know that puts me in a minority of round about one in comparison with the rest of the British public, but I do think we should give credit where it’s due. So just why did the Daily Mail think that a picture of the latest winner, Nadiya Hussain, shouldn’t grace their front pages, having accorded that honour to the winners of the prize for the last three years? Just why did they choose to relegate her to page 7?
Last year’s final of the baking show attracted an average audience of 12.3 million viewers on the Wednesday transmission between 8pm and 9pm, and a five-minute peak of 13.3 million. This was more than the number who watched the BBC coverage of the World Cup final. This year’s final drew an average of 13.4 million and a five-minute peak of 14.5 million on Wednesday, beating last year’s audience and the final of Britain’s Got Talent as the biggest show of 2015 to date. So we can’t say it wasn’t on people’s radar.
Now as we all know, the vast majority readers of the Daily Mail are all progressive, liberal, egalitarian types, so the one thing we can absolutely sure of is that there wasn’t a hint of racism influencing this significant editorial decision. There was obviously no way that a British citizen who chooses to cover her head should be discriminated against. After all, Her Majesty is never seen out in public without her head covered, and the Daily Mail just loves having her on the front page.
So there must be some other viable reasons, and here are my suggestions:
Perhaps the Mail found Hussain’s acceptance speech too emotional. Let us remind ourselves of what she actually said: “I’m never gonna put boundaries on myself ever again. I’m never gonna say I can’t do it. I’m never gonna say ‘maybe’. I’m never gonna say, ‘I don’t think I can.’ I can and I will.” This reduced Mary Berry to tears, and apparently also a significant number of those watching. Perhaps the Mail thought that a picture of Hussain on the front page would have the population crying into its cornflakes, and starting their day on an unhappy note.
Perhaps the show was broadcast on the wrong channel for the Mail to stomach; after all, we have recently seen significant numbers of articles in the paper indicating its dislike of the BBC and disgust at Auntie’s profligacy, left wing bias and faking key facts in some of its documentaries.
Or perhaps I’m being far too nice to the Mail; after all, Hussain was being hailed as an ‘icon of modern Britain’, and it would appear that for at least two of their journalists this was a step too far. Let us not forget that Quentin Letts expressed disgust at how the contestants had been selected, writing: “Were these new contestants … representative of the humdrum, plain-as-white-flour, (my italics) Middle-English bumblers whom I bet comprised the majority of the thousands of applicants who tried to get on to the show? Or were they chosen because they fitted some Twitter-influenced metropolitan wishlist…?” And just in case we had missed the point, Amanda Platell weighed in with her sympathies for Flora Shedden, who didn’t make it to the final three contestants, suggesting that “Perhaps if she’d made a chocolate mosque, she’d have stood a better chance”.
Interestingly, Hussain’s winning cake was a classic lemon drizzle, perfectly iced and decorated. How very British. She has my congratulations. I might even start watching…
The Mail’s target is the BBC, speaking with the full weight of Middle England behind it. But when did The Sun, with its claimed ‘finger on the pulse of the Great British Public’ get in on the act? Ally Ross’s editorial would have fitted right in with the Mail ethos, so is it a case of papers wishing to attract readership feeling that they need to indulge in spiteful copy?