In preparation for The Great British Bake Off moving to the channel (more of which next week), Channel 4 have launched another rip off, sorry, homage series. First we had cakes, then sewing, then allotments, then pottery…now Lego. Lego Masters is trying to raise a childs toy the standard of a real “hobby” (although let’s be honest, more people have Lego than a potters wheels). Apparently E4 is soon to launch Pro-celebrity Kerplunk while More 4 are running with Fuzzy Felt Artist of the Year. 

The programme started with the audition stage, and in true X Factor style, someone was crying within the first 5 minutes. From this we got our eight, two person teams. Their challenge was to create a chair and a Lego array of food, both things which have never been asked for on a Christmas list. A Lego Millennium Falcon? Yes please. A Lego camper van? Don’t mind if I do. A Lego fake Chinese banquet? Ermmm, thanks, but I’ve already eaten. They had fourteen hours to build their creation (nope, no idea why fourteen hours was chosen) and just like Bake Off, we saw their plans so we had an idea what the finished structure would look like. However, unlike Bake Off where the drawings are obviously drawn after the cake has been baked, these plans were literally drawn of the back of an envelops in crayon and looked nowt like the final build.
The teams were a combination of children and adults. The children were, well children playing with toys. The adults, they were a bit more weird. There were definite engineering types (two from Cambridge in fact) and let’s just say they did nothing to dispel the bad press engineers get. There was also an intriguing Irish mother and son who resembled Aardman Creature Comforts characters the way the son looked so chronically embarrassed by what his mum was saying.
Chairs were built and sat on by Melvyn “him off of Strictly that went out in the first round a couple of years ago”, half of which he destroyed. The food was judged by a Lego building expert and the structural engineer who build the Shard and two teams were eliminated. Yep, just two. We still have several more weeks of this to go. It’s almost as if Lego have planned this to coincide with the run up to Christmas. Perhaps this year children will be finding Lego toilets complete with Lego poohs in their stockings this year. Now that I would like in the John Lewis Christmas advert.

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