Should you ever need an instant serotonin boost, simply type “Alison Hammond” and “Harrison Ford” into YouTube. The 2017 interview, originally broadcast on ITV’s daytime staple This Morning before the release of Blade Runner 2049, is four minutes and 12 seconds of pure unadulterated silliness. “Bleak, dystopian, an absolute nightmare to be honest with you – and that’s just my interviewing technique,” Hammond jokes in her opening gambit, leaving the notoriously grumpy Ford and his co-star Ryan Gosling in hysterics. The presenter soon has the pair singing and knocking back whiskey shots, at one point prompting Gosling to walk off camera in faux outrage. It couldn’t be further from the usual formulaic back and forth between media-trained A-lister and deferential interviewer.
This week, Hammond will make her debut as the co-presenter of The Great British Bake Off, replacing outgoing host Matt Lucas. Her sit-down with Ford proves why she is such a brilliant signing for the latest series of the long-running show, which has started to feel a little past its sell-by date in recent years. She’s funny, authentic, a little bit chaotic and quick to burst into infectious laughter – whether she is having a run-in with Italian police live on camera in Pisa, playing Connect 4 with Beyoncé, serenading Mariah Carey or accidentally pushing an unsuspecting model off the famous This Morning weather map and into the chilly waters of Liverpool’s Albert Dock. It’s a formula that has helped her become one of Britain’s best-loved presenters in the two decades since she first appeared on our screens.
