We are now a few weeks into the new season, and once again it’s gratifying to see no preening egos, no cheating and a lack of petulant behaviour. 

Millions of people are once again getting their weekly televisual fix, with a very open field meaning second guessing who will be champion is a pointless task.

No, I don’t mean football.  But what I am talking about is equally popular as a TV event, with exactly the same number of people tuning in to last year’s final as switched on for the FA Cup Final.

I’m talking, of course, about the Great British Bake Off, that gentle, quintessentially British programme which has nevertheless spawned spin-offs in places as far flung as Australia and Brazil, Kenya and Uruguay.

Even France, which surely can justifiably view itself as the world leader when it comes to bread and patisserie, has adopted the format.

This enthusiasm for TV baking has been proving for a long time. 

This year is the 15th series of the show, and after it transferred from the BBC to Channel 4 in 2017, Bake Off managed to retain its immense viewing figures, easily becoming the channel’s most watched show. 

The 2023 final was watched by more than five times more people than the final of Love Island.

In an era of celebrity obsession, big-budget Netflix dramas and mindless yet curiously popular reality shows, how come a simple amateur baking show remains one of British television’s greatest hits?

I think the answer lies in that word ‘amateur’. 

Enormously impressive though the antics of our sporting heroes may be, it has become increasingly difficult to identify with them. 

With their well-funded training programmes, state-of-the-art equipment and obsessive training regimes, elite athletes may as well be another species to the rest of us.

I don’t want to belittle from the achievements of those who won medals in Paris this summer.  Just getting there required a level of commitment which most of us could only dream about. 

But that’s the point: it’s difficult to identify with them, and imagine ourselves ever getting anywhere near taking part.

With Bake Off, however, the very fact that the competitors are 12 amateur cooks (good cooks, granted, but otherwise just like you and me) makes us think that with a little effort and practice, we could all have a go. 

Especially when one of their bakes collapses, or they forget to put a basic ingredient such as sugar in their cakes.  It makes it much more real, and that is why we love to watch it.

In Norfolk we have another reason to identify with this year’s competition, as contestant Illiyin, who works as a perinatal trauma specialist midwife in Norwich, is flying the flag for the county. 

I am writing these words before this week’s episode, but in the first three weeks Illiyin has sailed through, despite a wobble when she fainted just after finishing her showstopper in Cake Week.

In sport, there is much talk about leaving a legacy.  This is a word which the sporting world loves to bandy about, with the organisers of the London 2012 Olympic Games claiming that all the money they spent would result in millions of us getting up off our sofas and taking part in sport.

Except, of course, it didn’t happen.  Partly because we are glued to our TV screens watching Bake Off, but mostly because the impossibly fit athletes we see competing at the Olympics make us feel too inadequate to even try.

Over 15 years, the legacy of the Great British Bake Off has been more profound.  Sales of baking equipment have risen by 42pc since Bake Off hit our screens, according to retailer Lakeland. 

Not only are we enjoying watching others cooking, but it is inspiring us to get in our kitchens and have a go.  The sheer number of office charity bake sales bears witness to this.

The London Olympics cost a staggering £9 billion of taxpayers’ money, and apart from West Ham getting a new stadium on the cheap, it’s difficult to see what the long-term benefit has been.  Over the course of this summer, a further £1.75 billion was spent on transfer fees in the Premier League alone.

Just imagine if that money had been spent on, for example, equipping schools to teach cooking skills to our young people. 

£10.5 billion is enough to give every school in Britain more than £430,000 to invest in facilities and teachers, giving fantastic nutrition and cookery skills to every one of our young people.

And if making the population as a whole healthier is the goal, that surely would represent better value for money.