Emma Thompson has broken a court injunction — and come uncomfortably close to a manure-spreading tractor — to film a Great British Bake Off spoof on land leased for fracking.
The Oscar-winner, along with her sister Sophie, made The Frack Free Bake Off as a satirical way of protesting against any drilling activity on a Lancashire site used by oil and gas exploration company Cuadrilla. Protesters have been banned from the area after a 2014 injunction.
“I’ve been aware of this issue for a while with my work with Greenpeace, and it came to a head for me when David Cameron went to the Paris climate conference and signed on to the protocol and then on the sly at Christmas, when nobody was looking, gave the nod to 200 fracking sites in Britain,” the actor said. “It proved to me our Government is saying one thing and doing the opposite.”
The sisters baked energy-themed cakes in a marquee created by Greenpeace and have released a series of videos detailing their work. A full episode of the show they have created was released yesterday.
The farmer who leases the land, at Preston New Road on the Fylde, near Blackpool, drove a muck spreader past the makeshift studio — hitting many of the crew with liquid manure. Police arrived but made no arrests.
The decision to lease the field to Cuadrilla has caused local upset and an application to drill has been rejected by Lancashire County Council, but the company has appealed the decision.
It follows Emma Thompson’s involvement in an attempt to urge the new director of the British Museum to drop BP as a sponsor. Along with other notable figures, including Mark Rylance and Margaret Atwood, an open letter was sent to Hartwig Fischer in the hope he would veto a new contract with the oil company.
