Karl Puschmann: A grinch finds the meaning of Xmas in Kiwi Bake Off Celeb Special

Suzy Cato (middle) explains her baked creation to hosts Pax Assadi and Hayley Sproull in The Great Kiwi Bake Off Celebrity Christmas Special.

As we approach the business end of the silly season, my Christmas spirit has been found lacking. Assuming, that is, it can be found at all.

It’s puzzling because I’ve done all the Christmassy things. I braved the hordes at not one, but two shopping malls to stock up on presents. No one clapped or cheered more than me as my daughter and her school friends mercilessly butchered one carol after another at their annual Christmas performance. And I spent a lazy Sunday afternoon decorating the Christmas tree with the family, before decorating it every night since because the bloody kitten keeps climbing it and knocking all the baubles and ornaments off.

So, as you can see, my heart should have been overflowing with festive spirit and goodwill to all mankind. I needed some holiday cheer. Something to remind me of the magic of Christmas in a way that frantically finding a new hiding place for the Elf on a Shelf each night was not.

I turned to the one thing that could help. I turned on the telly.

The Christmas special has been a Christmas tradition for as long as I can remember. If anything was going to bring some ho-ho-ho back to my Christmas, it was TV.

My choice was rogue. I could have gone the easy route and selected a cynical favourite like Billy Bob Thornton’s brutal comedy Bad Santa or the Christmas carnage of Bruce Willis’ Die Hard or even Stanley Kubrick’s Christmas-themed erotic thriller Eyes Wide Shut. But I was after Christmas joy, not a good time.

So instead I turned to the motley crew that TVNZ had harvested to star in The Great Kiwi Bake Off Celebrity Christmas Special, which is streaming on TVNZ OnDemand. If anything could cook up some Christmas spirit it had to be these folks, right?

The show introduced the celebs first. Which was helpful as I didn’t recognise a couple. There was popular mime Suzy Cato, reality star Edna Swart, comedian David Correos, actor JJ Fong, presenter Matt Gibb and “pink haired covid lady” Siouxsie Wiles.

“It’s a star-studded cast,” Gibbs said generously, before voicing the question on everybody’s mind. “But are they bakers though?”

No. Obviously. After all, competence and great skill is not entertaining.

All the contestants pleaded hopelessness. All bar Cato, who was the only one brave enough to admit “a little” baking prowess. She was also the one the others pegged to win, potentially taking home a cool $12k for the cats and dogs of her chosen charity, the SPCA.

Correos said he’d bet on it. A producer asked why. “Cos she’s the mother of the nation!” he said.

Sorry, Suzy, you’re well-loved, certainly, but that’s Judy Bailey.

Fortunately, the producer corrected his mistake. “No,” she said. “That’s Hilary Barry.”

Wrong again! I mean, we literally call her Aunty Hilary.

This disrespect for these two great women of our nation was not filling me with Christmas cheer. Luckily, Judge Peter Gordon was on hand to bring it back. Their first task, he said, was to make his speciality Christmas muffin.

It saw the contestants howling in ineptitude. “Do you start with the sugar?” one worried. “Is this butter soft?” another queried.

“These aren’t ordinary muffins,” Gibb explained, mid-freak out. “They’re Peter Gordon’s muffins!”

Lest we misunderstood the difficulty of the challenge Gordon explained it to viewers.

“There’s a lot of spice in there,” he said.

However, one contestant wasn’t rattled by the challenge. Wiles’ scientific evaluation of the recipe was that Gordon’s super-special Christmas muffins were, “basically muffins with fruit”.

They all struggled with different aspects of the muffin. Correos uttered a woeful, “oh no!” when he gave his muffin a taste. Cato, the favourite remember, made a rookie error that host Hayley Sproull immediately identified after one bite.

“Did you forget the sugar?” she asked.

And Gibb blamed his tools, declaring what I hope becomes his catchphrase moving forward, ”that soy sauce ruined everything!”

Chaos reigned in the kitchen. I was a little taken aback. How could these successful, attractive adults all have made a dog’s breakfast out of something as simple as the humble muffin? Then I remembered that I almost burnt my kitchen down grilling pita bread a few weeks ago ...

Suddenly, my sympathies changed. Lo! A Christmas miracle!

Yes, these six celebrities were all horrendously incompetent bakers. They knew that - one admitted to not even having an oven! But still, every last one of them had shown up ready to bake their all. Even though their all was stuff-all.

Were they not the very embodiment of Christmas spirit? They were all doing their best - apparently - to help others. To raise money for those less fortunate. To help the kids, the LBGTQs, those poor of sight and the victims of strokes, the autistic, the disabled and all the unloved cats and dogs out there. These six celebrities were failing to bake with any competence whatsoever so that the lives of others could be improved. To ensure a merry Christmas for those who may not have otherwise gotten one.

And is that not what this whole Christmas malarky is about? Peace on earth is a tricky one, but goodwill to all mankind doesn’t need to be.

There was still half an hour to go but I’d seen enough. Bah, humbug? Nay. Ho-Ho-ho, I thought as I opened Disney+ and put on Die Hard.