Great British Bake Off 2014 final as it happened

Bake Off finalists 2014: Richard Burr, Nancy Birthwhistle and Luis Troyano (BBC)

Tonight three amateur bakers will battle it out for the Great British Bake Off crown – and cookery judge Mary Berry says she is expecting “sheer perfection” from the contestants.

Richard Burr, 37, the London builder who always has a pencil behind his ear, heads into tonight’s finale as the bookies’ favourite having won the accolade of ‘star baker’ a record five times.

He is joined by Luis Troyano, 42, who hails from both Spain and Stockport, and Nancy Birtwhistle, 60, a grandmother from Hull.

The trio will tonight serve up a showstopper featuring sponge, caramel, choux pastry and petit four.

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Whoever wins this evening, the show has been a mega ratings hit for the BBC, with last week’s semi-final commanding an audience of 8.8m.

The programme appears to have survived its transition from BBC Two to BBC One and even remained unscathed by the Baked Alaska scandal (where a contestant took a rival’s confection out of the freezer!) which marred earlier episodes and caused a media storm.