The Great British Bake Off review: Nigella Lawson brings danger and charm. Even Paul Hollywood looks humbled

Even the most bumbling baker knows too strong a flavouring can ruin your efforts – and that is the danger as kitchen mega-star Nigella Lawson parachutes into The Great British Bake Off (Channel 4, Tuesday, 8pm) tent as a new judge.Lawson is charm on a swizzle stick, but she is also posher than a shooting weekend on a Highland estate. It is striking how much deference she is shown both by this year’s Bake Off hopefuls, her fellow adjudicator Paul Hollywood, and presenters Noel Fielding and Alison Hammond.It makes you wonder if it would have been more efficient to rename the series The Nigella Lawson Show. Because that’s where things head after a fun opening in which her predecessor Prue Leith departs in a Tardis and Lawson is unveiled as the regenerated “Doctor Prue”.“Wow, it’s Nigella,” gasps a star-struck Fielding, who seems to be speaking on behalf of everyone involved in Bake Off, who collectively cannot quite believe that Lawson, daughter of a baron and of a Lyons coffee house heiress, walks among them. Oh, for an outsider to pop in, roll their eyes and then exit again.READ MORELawson understands that her job is to sprinkle upper-class fairy dust on an oikish reality show consumed by people who eat microwave food, and she does not disappoint. “Don’t let the sugar shout, let it sing,” she proclaims before setting the contestants their inaugural challenge – to make a chocolate Guinness cake.As any stout connoisseur will tell you (this one anyway), the first thing to do when making a Guinness cake is to chuck the Guinness and use Beamish or Murphy’s instead – but the Bake Off gang are not privy to such secrets and muddle on as best they can.Their reward after their afternoon’s toil is some top-rank Nigella-isms. “I like a bit of goo,” she tells one baker; another is congratulated for “singing their song” while a third commits the grievous sin of making pudding rather than a cake. Back in the day, you’d have been put in the stocks for that.Lawson creates an instant splash and even the usually self-satisfied Hollywood looks humbled in her presence. But it does raise the obvious pitfall of Lawson dominating the show to such an extent that everything else is reduced to mere icing sugar – a risk Bake Off is going to have to be alive to in the weeks ahead.