It was a Tuesday. It was 8pm. It was The Great British Bake Off week three.

And it was Bread Week. Bread’s bread, you might think. I am vaguely intrigued as to how these 10 remaining contestants will handle their doughy tasks.

But the rest of us?

The rest of us were EXCITED.

(Mostly.)

And rightly so – there was much to commend it. Precisely executed bakes. Fantastic bread sculptures, crafted lovingly and rising to meet the standards of even notoriously hard-to-please pro baker boy Paul Hollywood. A triumphant Julia unseating double Star Baker Steven. The collective cry of a thousand weary city dwellers given a glimpse of Tom’s apparently idyllic lifestyle (hello open swims in picture-perfect lake, tell us again why we don’t live with you?).

But that’s not why you’re here. Though baking-related controversy was, this time, thin on the ground (no fondant issues, no peppermint scandals), there was something else holding our attention. This, friends, was possibly the oddest, most innuendo-laden episode of GBBO we’ve ever encountered. And the interwebs had a lot to say about that.

Read more: The GBBO scandal that Mary Berry never would have stood for

While it’s hard to believe it was all as unintentional as the good old Mary Berry days (Prue Leith so knew what she was doing with that floury finger) and we are currently praying to the oven gods that we’re not one wonky ball away from slipping into complete panto, it was nevertheless a beautiful display of GBBO finery.

First, the not-sexual-but-hilarious-anyway bits. There were unfortunate creatures aplenty, both mythical...

And sadly, sadly not.

Noel Fielding and Sandi Tokvig’s take on the Mel and Sue punnery paid off with a pretty spectacular Drag Race moment.

Flo and Kate both went for a squid-ink octopus, and it’s fair to say one fared better than the other…

And so, we lost Flo (who was totally fine about it, so fine, really really fine).

(By the way, anyone heard of Tom Jones’s locker?)

And what’s a teacake anyway?

Steven seemed to falter without his trusty airbrush, but pulled it back for mega praise come the showstopper round.

But it was Julia who #snailedit, bagging Star Baker (basically – no offence – probably because they couldn’t give it to Steven again, especially as he messed up his teacakes).

Which leads us nicely to all the innuendo. All of it.

We started fairly lightly, an offhand “nice buns” here, some “rounded bottoms” there.

Prue said some regrettable things about flouring your finger.

Then this happened.

Come the snail, we all round descended into farce.

On and on it went.

OK, let’s cleanse with a children’s TV reference.

Next week is Caramel Week. Surely, surely there are fewer dirty jokes in spun sugar, but let’s see what Channel 4 pulls out of the bag. The filthy, filthy bag of baking-related sex jokes.

The Great British Bake Off airs on Tuesdays, 8pm, C4.

Image: Channel 4