Emirates Lit Fest 2017: Bake-off queen Nadiya talks of rise against adversity

Nadiya Hussain applied to be a school dinner lady but did not get the job. She was the first Muslim contestant on BBC TV's The Great British Bake Off and a winner, who then went on to bake the cake for Queen Elizabeth II's 90 birthday.

Nadiya Hussain, the first Muslim contestant and winner of BBC TV show The Great British Bake Off, talked about her life and books (below) at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature. Victor Besa for The National.Show less

Life might have turned out differently had Nadiya Hussain landed the dinner lady job she applied for. She was knocked back – a move staff at that particular school are no doubt kicking themselves about now.

“I was forever looking for routes to work with food. I applied for a job as a dinner lady, but it did not work out,” she says, laughing. “It just felt like my calling but my path never led to that – and now here I am.”

At 32, Hussain has written two cookbooks and a work of fiction, appeared on numerous television shows in the UK and just landed one of the most covetable roles in TV– presenting a prime time cookery show for the BBC, the broadcaster which first made her a household name on The Great British Bake Off. She was also asked to bake the cake for Queen Elizabeth II's 90th birthday.

It is almost unfathomable to think all that has happened in the past 18 months. Two years ago, she was a stay-at-home mum, her head buried in cookbooks and dreaming up concoctions for her husband Abdal, 35, and their children Musa, 10, Dawud, 9 and Maryam, 6.

It was an application to The Great British Bake Off, a TV contest that pits amateur chefs against each other, that brought her fame. She unwittingly launched a conversation about what it meant to be British and was propelled into the limelight as the face of modern Islam.

As the show’s first Muslim contestant, with parents of Bangladeshi origin, hijab-wearing Hussain won over the nation and was praised for doing more for race relations in Britain than any posturing politician.

Up to 15 million people watched enthralled, and wept with her when she won the show in 2015, with the words “just because I’m not a stereotypical British person, it doesn’t mean that I am not into bunting cake and tea … I am never going to put boundaries on myself ever again. I can and I will.”

It was a more confident Hussain who appeared in Dubai for the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature, boosted further by the announcement she would be a presenter on the BBC's Big Family Cooking Showdown, a rival show to Bake Off, which was lost to a rival TV channel.

“I have no control over [schedules] but I am really proud to be working on an amazing show,” she says. “It is about family and food and everything I am about.”

Hussain will also this year appear in Nadiya's British Food Adventure, an eight-episode series in which she travels the breadth of the UK to discover regional cuisine and food producers.

The Chronicles of Nadiya last year saw her visit Bangladesh to explore her heritage and its cuisine. "I learnt to accept it is OK to have two homes and to be part of two different worlds. Just as I can be a mother and a wife, I can be Bangladeshi and British."

She was in the UAE promoting her books, Nadiya's Kitchen, filled with her sweet treats; Nadiya's Bake Me a Story, a children's book featuring recipes woven into reinvented fairytales; and her first adult fiction, The Secret Lives of the Amir Sisters, the first instalment of a trilogy.

The novel, co-written with author Ayisha Malik, focuses on four sisters living in a quaint English village while trying to counterbalance their British and Bangladeshi roots.

“I went back to old characters I had written years ago,” says Luton-born Hussain, who first published a poem at age 7. “The book is not autobiographical but there are little things growing up in a particular community that you hear or see or experience, and elaborating on them really helped bring those characters to life.

“This last year has been quite a journey in learning how to do something completely different – structure and plots and hooks. It has made it a bit easier now I am on the second book.”

If Hussain seems like the woman who has it all, it has not come without a price. She has crippling anxiety and says that growing up, she doubted herself.

“I suffer badly from panic disorder – the tiniest thing can trigger me off,” she says. “It is like constantly living with a monster. The difference now is that the monster is not right in front of me, he’s behind me, and every now and again, he will tap me on the shoulder.”

Along the way, she has had to battle racial abuse, overcome her fears and face an onslaught of public attention.

“I did not go into a baking show thinking I was doing it as a Muslim woman,” she says. “The way I choose to dress and my hijab is incidental ... the one thing I maintain is that I am not perfect. I am not a perfect mum, a perfect Muslim nor a perfect Bangladeshi or British person.”

Her support network, she adds, gives her strength to deal with the tougher moments. “My husband and my kids are great. No matter what anyone says or whatever negativity I see or hear, I always get to go home to three lovely, very happy children.”