Nadiya Hussain: GBBO winner on dealing with racism and the advice she would give to this year's contestants

The GBBO alum talks to the Independent about how her life has changed since the show, her role model status and who she is backing to win Bake Off

In the space of a year, Nadiya Hussain’s life has changed beyond recognition.

The 31-year-old’s world as she knew it transformed after winning over the hearts of millions with her beloved anxious facial expressions and wedding cake showstopper in the Great British Bake Off. Newly established as a national treasure, she was even asked to bake the cake for the Queen’s 90th birthday celebrations.

When we meet, the former stay-at-home Mum is enjoying food cooked for her in a plush central London hotel suite where she is taking a short break in the middle of her book tour. She mentions the major role reversal that has taken place now that Abdal, her husband of 11 years, largely works from home so he can care for their children.

It’s bemusing to think the woman who gave a trembling victory speech in a final watched by over 13 million people, vowing to no longer let her crippling self-doubt deter her from anything again, is the same self-assured, confident woman sat in front of me.

Dressed in bright colours and a bright smile, Hussain is as charming and polite as you would expect from her GBBO performance, so much so that her publicists laugh awkwardly when they realise she has offered me a drink and some food before they have.

“My life has just snowballed,” she says. “I didn’t expect anything to come out of Bake Off, you know, I was happy to go home and just go back to my children. Stuff just started to happen. I was like, ‘wow’. I didn’t expect it, it was all unlikely for me for me, so I think that’s why I’m enjoying it so much because I didn’t expect it.”

Now highly media trained, Hussain looks back at me with a smile as a prompt to continue when she has finished answering each question. Earlier this month she was even rumoured to be transitioning to Channel 4 along with GBBO and Paul Hollywood. Instead, she’s done a Mary Berry and signed on to further projects with the BBC.

She has also written a children’s cookbook-come-story book consisting of 15 childhood tales all finished off with a recipe ranging from a goats cheese tart to gingerbread men. The idea to fuse a recipe book with a story book came as a result of a “lightbulb moment” when she was struggling to balance time in the kitchen and time with her children.

“You know, they [her children] love reading and they love cooking, baking, being in the kitchen, and more often than not I would be in the kitchen, really busy, doing something and one of them will come up to me and say, 'Mummy can you just read that before bedtime?' [...] you're like 'Ohh really, do I have to,' so I would have to stop everything, sit down and read this story to them, and it was like a light bulb moment.”

Other projects she has filled her time with since the show's ending included a two-part BBC documentary, The Chronicles Of Nadiya, which saw her trace her roots back to Bangladesh and also explore other parts of the country, including the capital Dhaka, for the first time. Part of the success of the show was undoubtedly Hussain’s candidness; she spoke openly about the day of her arranged marriage as “being one of the worst days of my life” and was shown chatting with her cousin about why they wear the hijab – the significance of the latter being it was televised at the time all eyes were on France after they outlawed the Burkini in the south of the country (which I was requested not to ask her about).

What Hussain does tell me is she is aware of her relatively solitary position of being a hijab-wearing Muslim woman in the public eye, partly because she is often reminded by fans hailing her as a good role model.

“ I didn't expect any of that to happen,” she says. “I only ever aimed to be a good role model to my children. So, for other people to say that I am a role model for them, you know, grownups older than me. I get emails from 70-year-old English men saying, 'Thank you for doing whatever it is that you did' and that is an amazing thing. You know, I didn't go on there to touch lives. I went on there just to find my confidence because that is what I had lost in the ten years I had been at home. And I found my confidence, and with that there are loads of people who have said, you know what you are a role model. And that is a good thing, I think.”

Despite the new-found role model and national treasure status, Hussain says she still has to endure racist abuse because she chooses to wear a headscarf.

"It just [means] outwardly you can tell I am a Muslim and then there are nasty people out there who feel the need to voice their opinions. And you know, I accept that people have opinions. So yeah, it is still there. The difference now is I have to hear those things through social media. But I don't respond because there's a dignity in silence and there is no need to validate negative comments by responding to them.”

Another reason she will not respond to the racist abuse, which she has said before has included being pushed and shoved, is because of her determination to protect her children.

“I have got three children to raise and I always maintain that I have got three beautiful, very happy, very rounded human beings and they are going to have to experience the world like I have. And it will be different for them, but what I don't want is for them to have a chip on their shoulder. I have had to experience some very horrible things but I do not let that define who I am and I need my kids to know that those negative people are in the minority and they live in a lovely place. Britain is home for us and they should be proud of that and I want them to be proud of that. I am.”

Her decision to be open about her religion, arranged marriage and the abuse she has faced comes down to her own realisation of the obstacles she has overcome, she says.

“Being a Muslim, being Bangladeshi, being British, all of those things. Being a stay at home mum, you know. I have had to jump so many hurdles to get where I am right now […] and I think sometimes it is really important to talk about it, because there is somebody, somewhere out there who will say, 'I get what she's talking about'. You know, maybe it will give somebody the confidence to say: 'I can do something'. I think that is really important, so I don't believe in just shutting myself away and hiding, hiding myself.”

Time is yet to tell whether the next Bake Off winner will reach the same levels of success achieved by Hussain. “My son reminds me very often, he’s like ‘you do realise you’re not the winner of Bake Off anymore, you’re the winner from 2015’, so my feet are firmly on the ground."

Any advice for this year's winner? When we spoke she had her eye on Selasi (who broke the nation’s heart by exiting after the semi-final) and Andrew who will go up against Jane and Candice on Wednesday’s final.

“I hope they enjoyed it because they are never going to do that again,” she says smiling. “That experience does not come back again […] At the time, it feels so stressful and you feel like you are not enjoying it and if I could tell myself that last year: Enjoy it, I think I would have enjoyed it a little bit more.”

Bake Me A Story is available now.