The Great Scottish Bake Off

Often you hear independence switherers worrying endlessly about losing their favourite TV programmes, such as the Great British Bake Off, Big Brother or The Apprentice. The reply is often that Ireland has made a deal with the BBC to make their channels available in the Republic, at a lower price than Scotland currently pays through the licence fee, and of course Scotland will be able to do the same.

That’s true, of course, but something that’s often overlooked is that most successful TV show concepts these days get bought by foreign TV channels. Scotland wouldn’t be restricted to watching the Great rUK Bake Off (if it’ll still exist by then), but a Scottish TV channel would probably buy the concept and broadcast The Great Scottish Bake Off.

Just to illustrate how accurately the concepts get copied, here are a few foreign Bake Off clones:

Den Store Bagedyst from Denmark:

Das große Backen from Germany:

The Great Australian Bake Off:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2xIDHd38PA

Bake Off — Ale Ciacho form Poland:

The Great Irish Bake Off:

Le Meilleur Pâtissier from France:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le4Qjb2srNg

You can see a complete list of international version on Wikipedia.

It would have the advantage for Scots that it would be much easier to get onto these shows because they would be recruiting from a population of 5½m instead of 64m, and as far as I can tell, the quality of the cakes isn’t any worse in the Danish version (Denmark has roughly the same number of inhabitants as Scotland).