Denmark’s watercoolers are still vibrating one week on from the climax of DR1’s most popular show of the late summer.
The forces of good and evil collided on the final judging table of ‘Den Store Bagedyst’, the Danish version of ‘The Great British Bake Off’, which regularly attracted a million viewers over its eight-week run before concluding last week on Wednesday.
Because after the show, it transpired that one of the cakes was a fake – a three-tiered homage to Batman, Spiderman and Superman submitted by 21-year-old Mette Hassing Mikkelsen.
Anyone with a knowledge of superheroes will tell you they have their fair share of impostors, but that hasn’t stopped people from calling foul across the land.
The proof is in the pudding or, at least in this case, the cake, they argue.
Can you plagiarise a cake?
DR has even opened a poll on its website to ask the public’s opinion on whether the copying amounts to plagiarism.
Mikkelsen has rejected the claims.
“Yes, I found inspiration on the net,” she told Metroexpress.
“But I don’t understand all of the criticism. I took the idea further myself, so it became my cake. If I made a tray bake, would I be accused of copying all of the bakers in Denmark?”
Popular with public and press
In any case, Mikkelsen did not win. That honour befell 25-year-old whist-kid Tobias Hamann-Pedersen, whose crowning moment was witnessed by 1.2 million Danes – well over 20 percent of the population.
The show is also popular in the UK where similar controversies, Alaskagate in 2014 and Custardgate in 2013, have titillated the public’s sweet spot for a sticky story.
