WCXX

Glenn's finished puff-pastry offerings looked, as he himself admitted, "shocking". But what he said next sent the jinx-o-meter soaring.

"But there are 12 portions. And some of them aren't too bad," he said, as he evaluated his work. "They should be enough to keep me in."

Oh Glenn. Don't say that. Because you know what saying that will mean: yes, Glenn was sent home. His puff pastry was comprehensively rubbished by the judges – indeed, declared to be not really puff pastry, because of the unorthodox butter/folding/thing. And, in the heat of the pre-quarter-final competition, that was enough to do for poor Glenn.

Which was a shame, not least because Glenn was – literally – the last man standing. I had really warmed to Glenn, and to his barely-contained self-deprecatory flappiness, over the weeks that he had been in the tent.

By this stage of the contest, Glenn had also clearly earned his place. But the fact that all five of the remaining bakers are women brings me back to a point I made right at the start of the series. Were these blokes really the best male bakers who auditioned, out of literally thousands of hopefuls? Right from the start, the men seemed to have been cast at least as much for their foibles (geek Rob, vulnerable Toby) as for their ability with gluten.

Well, now they're all gone. And one thing we know for sure, at this point, is that the 2013 Bake Off will be won by a resolutely normal woman. Which seems to be what the producers wanted, all along.

This week's best…

Ingredient

Barberries, in Kimberley's spotted dick

Confection

Frances's Bass Clef Palmiers

Mary Berry put-down

"I don't know how well raw fruit goes with a mille-feuille, really."

Paul Hollywood put-down

"They look hideous. They are a mess. It looks like they've been dropped."