More tears for Keith as the seventh series of The Great Pottery Throw Down starts

The baking show itself has the Hollywood handshake (we’ve seen the Prue pat as well, although it hasn’t caught on quite so much), while The Great British Sewing Bee has Patrick Grant’s immaculate facial hair and Esme Young’s name-dropping anecdotes, while Britain’s Best Woodworker features Mel Geidroyc’s puns.

As for the Throw Down, which is returning for its seventh series this week, there’s Keith Brymer Jones’s tears.

The professional potter and ceramics designer, who’s been a judge on the programme since it began in 2015, is now famous for weeping whenever he’s moved by one of the competitors’ efforts. Whatever they’ve made doesn’t even have to be perfect – as long as they’ve put their heart and soul into it, it’s highly likely he’ll end up crying.

“I get emotional,” he revealed in an interview with The Guardian in 2021, “because it’s a craft I love. It is my life. When I see a potter communicating their creativity via something they’ve made, I can’t help but cry. You’re watching imagination come to life. It’s so special.”

London-born, Whitstable-based Brymer Jones is the only member of the original presenting team left on the show.

The first run was hosted by Sara Cox in 2015, was a success and inspired some viewers to give the craft a go via local classes. The second series in early 2017 was also a moderate hit but, when Bake Off moved to Channel 4, the Throw Down disappeared for three years and many thought it would never return.

However, More4 decided to pick it up, installing Melanie Sykes as presenter and replacing one of the judges, Kate Malone, with Sue Pryke. With the fourth run, it was a case of almost all change again, with Derry Girls star Siobhan McSweeney taking over as host and Richard Miller, aka ‘kiln man Rich’, who’d previously been the show’s technician, stepping up to take over as a judge from Pryke.

Comedian Ellie Taylor stepped in (no pun intended) when McSweeney broke her leg ahead of the fifth series, but the Bafta-winning star soon returned. Her natural wit and rapport with the competitors has made her a popular presenter. She insists, however, that acting is still her main job.

“Overall, presenting is great fun and I love it,” she admitted while promoting her travel series Exploring Northern Ireland a couple of years ago. “But it’s a side hustle. It’s something that I feel I’m getting away with.

“It’s that paradox of feeling very awkward being myself, because I had no character to hide behind, but great personal validation of feeling, ‘Well, they know that I’m probably not any good at this, so I don’t have to be good at it. I can just be myself’.”

It’s an approach that’s worked, and no doubt one she’ll continue when she welcomes another dozen amateur potters to the show’s base in Stoke during the new run’s first episode.

They’ll be tasked with making a roast dinner set, and if you spot Brymer Jones’s tears, you’ll know that something very special indeed has occurred.