Soft peaks

Crumbs from collapsed tiers of the Great British Bake-Off are tasty, but ultimately unsatisfying.

Love Productions boss Richard McKerrow has been characterised as pretty unlovable. Jake Kanter has the story of how he engaged lawyers to tackle the BBC over Hair, a 2014 in-house-produced hairdressing reality show on BBC3 - McKerrow claimed it 'ripped off' the GBBO format. Then came The Big Painting Challenge, 'a nationwide search for Britain's best amateur artist'. Again, Love cried foul. If the BBC conceded any ground in these two cases, they've been poorly advised.

Andrew Billen in The Times (paywalled) reveals that McKerrow phoned the DG on Monday to say there could be no new BBC deal, after more than a year of negotiations. C4's Jay Hunt then believed she wasn't poaching, but buying the show on the open market - a national event that might otherwise be lost to the nation. She'd got pre-approval from her board for the scale of the deal - probably with maths based on advertising slots at £10k for 30 seconds, plus a lucrative main sponsor deal with, say, Waitrose.

Meanwhile, the cheeky monkeys at The Sun, who were first with the story of a possible switch for GBBO, now think it makes the case for privatising C4.