Double treat of baking and travel at the same time

Date Published: 23-Apr-2012

Two of my favourite hobbies are cooking and travel and one series currently being shown on the BBC provides satisfaction on both counts.

The Hairy Bikers’ Bakeation on BBC 2 on Tuesday nights is coming to an end as they arrive in France tonight and finish their journey through Europe in Spain next week.

It will be a programme I will miss and that’s a good complaint and one that its producers of course would hope viewers feel about it.

These two chefs and motorbike enthusiasts are very likeable, though they hardly fit the traditional idea of what a TV presenter should look like.

But there are more and more unlikely presenters on our TV screens (Mary Beard on Meet the Romans on the same channel just after the Hairy Bikers for instance!) and that’s not a bad thing.

I have been fans of the Hairy Bikers since they first came on TV with their lovely regional accents and cheeky sense of humour. In fact, I find these two presenters funnier than any other programme described as comedy anywhere else. I just don’t seem to ‘get’ what other people describe as comedy. I find my laughs elsewhere.

Si King and Dave Myers so obviously love their food. They make no bones about what they like to eat and they don’t scrimp on quantities. Not for them the little sip or the minute sample on a spoon. No, this is a hearty tucking in to almost anything that is put down in front of them.

Basically, the premise of this particular series was them travelling around Europe to find out what people baked and what, if any, was that particular area’s speciality.

I am now convinced that bakers are mad! Maybe it’s the yeast or the heat of the ovens but the characters they met were hilarious. There was one in particular in either Holland or Belgium who looked like one of the Marx brothers and laughed loudly at his own jokes, as did the two presenters despite the language barrier.

Funnily enough last week’s programme in Italy was one of the dullest by far and I was astounded at how strict their health and safety regulations were as this meant the two chefs couldn’t have an oven outside for their outdoor cooking demonstrations and they couldn’t offer food samples to people passing by. Austria, which you would associate with a stricter regime, was great crack and Vienna with its ornate cafes and fantastic pastries, was one of the most entertaining.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.