Cover story
Mum of three Nadiya Hussain on suffering colourism in her own family, getting a grip on anxiety and why GBBO is right to go back to basics
Had Nadiya Hussain down as a quiet, reserved sort? Think again. A few days before her woman&home shoot, the Great British Bake Off star was in a fortified room, smashing things to smithereens. ‘I broke up TVs, a toilet, computers, glass bottles. It was a real release!’ smiles Nadiya, 38, describing her 30 minutes in a ‘rage room’, an experience where people let off steam with a baseball bat.
For the celebrity cook and her husband, Abdal, 41, the evening was their first proper date since Nadiya won GBBO in 2015, when life became a time-starved juggle of book-writing (18 so far, FYI), cooking shows, brand deals, media interviews and parenting their three kids, Musa, 17, Dawud, 16, and Maryam, 13.
‘We used to do date nights regularly a decade ago, but it was always dinners and that got boring,’ she says, revealing the motive for their off-the-wall date.
And, later, Nadiya unveils another secret – her dirty sense of humour…
‘Past 10pm, I get inappropriately funny,’ she admits. ‘In our families, you never say “boobs” or “willy”, or talk about periods, but I’m like, “Let’s talk about it all!” – and that’s without drinking!’
There’s never a dull moment in Nadiya’s company, largely because she never hides her truth, and it was this (plus her famous one-liners and facial expressions) that made her a hit in GBBO’s sixth series. And from an honest heart comes revelation. In her 2019 memoir, Finding My Voice, Nadiya, who grew up with five siblings in a working-class Bangladeshi community in Luton, exposed a childhood tarnished by abuse and bullying, plus a subsequent battle with anxiety and panic attacks. Happily, she says her mental health is now in check thanks to daily 6km woodland walks and weights workouts at home in Milton Keynes.
With another book, Nadiya’s Simple Spices, just out, plus an accompanying BBC2 series, Nadiya is about to be everywhere. Smashing it, yet again!
I could cook and write for the rest of my life.
That’s the hope! My latest book has been in the making my whole life, but now felt like the right time, especially because in two years my son will be off to university, so this is the book he’ll want to take.
It’s the way I cook at home, and the way my mum and grandma cook. Every household that’s grown up eating spices has a staple spice cupboard. I’m lucky that I’ve been able to understand spices from a young age, but it doesn’t have to be difficult.
My role as a mother has become more intense in the past few years.
Everyone always told me, ‘The older your children get, the less they need you.’ That’s really untrue. Physically,
