Photograph Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Each day Beast/Getty/Netflix
Matt Lucas has lasted three seasons on The Nice British Baking Present, and that’s three seasons too many. Idiot me as soon as, disgrace on you. Idiot me twice, disgrace on me. However idiot me thrice? The joke is up, man!
In Lucas’ first season on GBBS, I wished to offer him the good thing about the doubt—perhaps he wanted a while to work by the kinks of the baking sequence. Within the second season, once I nonetheless couldn’t be bothered to snigger at his jokes, I hoped I was the issue, that I used to be simply being too choosy. However with this most up-to-date season, during which the host made racist jokes and quipped round about former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, one factor was made clear: It’s time for Matt Lucas to get the boot.
Earlier than you rush to inform me I’m unsuitable, and that Lucas deserves yet one more probability on the GBBS internet hosting gig, let the individuals converse for themselves. Followers of the present have bonded over Matt’s absolute destruction of it, coming collectively to determine a manner to make sure he doesn’t come again for an additional season.
Nice British Baking Present viewers have drafted a petition, urging the BBC, Channel 4, and the whole United Kingdom to take away Matt Lucas. “This 12 months’s bakers appear much less tolerant of his antics than earlier years, and Noel's disdain for Matt grows extra obvious with every passing episode,” the petition reads. “It may solely be assumed that the sketches that kick off every week's episode are written by Matt and during which Noel should begrudgingly take part.”
You don’t want to inform me twice. Lucas has been cursing The Nice British Baking Present in a number of methods, every extra atrocious than the final. First, he goes to nice lengths to distract the bakers. Different hosts, together with Noel Fielding and Sandi Toksvig, have additionally been criticized for his or her bumbling quips delivered amidst tense baking challenges. However Lucas pushes it one step additional, forcing bakers to name their very own time and asking to eat their dishes. Simply cease, man!
It’s not simply his distracting nature. Lucas dumped fairly a number of off-color jokes into this season of GBBS as effectively. Throughout the controversial Mexican Week episode, he and Fielding joked about whether or not the nation is an actual place, and let this complete piece of dung fly: “There will probably be no Mexican jokes,” Fielding mentioned in the beginning of the episode. Lucas responded: “What, not even Juan?”
Draft up the severance pay now. Lucas deserves to be fired for that alone. Even when producers wrote it (which, in that case, fireplace the producers too), the host ought to’ve protected his personal integrity and refused to learn the road. Clearly, although, it is a downside with Lucas. In the beginning of the season, he performed buddy-buddy with Daybreak, a contestant who labored with Boris Johnson—who, TL;DR, shouldn't be a goofy, enjoyable, lighthearted man.
One thing very eye-opening occurs on the finish of Lucas’ third season on the present, too. In the current GBBS finale, Fielding calls out sick, leaving Lucas sole internet hosting duties for the most important episode of the 12 months. The stakes are excessive, and, naturally, Lucas flops round like a fish out of water, attempting to distract the bakers away from their hopes and goals.
He forces Abdul to announce a time name in one other language. He stalks Syabira across the tent, asking her about quail eggs and nibbling bites from her bread. Even Paul and Prue appear bored with his antics, that are simply abominable. The one one that laughs at his floundering jokes, that are as unfunny as an episode of Gray’s Anatomy, is Syabira. Poor, candy, Syabira, throwing Matt Lucas pity laughs as she sweeps each single problem.
So, if the UK sees that petition and really goes by with firing Lucas, who ought to we rent to host The Nice British Baking Present? Stanley Tucci, one other bald man with some precise style and whimsy. Rent him and his amazingly attractive British spouse, Felicity Blunt, to host the sequence. They each like to cook dinner, and would make for great replacements on the present.
It’s probably that Matt Lucas and his gauche Hawaiian shirts will probably be again for an additional season of Nice British Baking Present subsequent 12 months. And guess what? I’ll nonetheless watch each dang episode, livid that he will get to stay round and proceed to get below all of our skins. Hopefully, although, he’ll abandon his criminally unfunny schtick. Perhaps, then, I can begin to perceive why the present continues to make use of him.