Racists asked me: What gives you the right to make a Cornish pasty?
CThe times I have called it out, I’ve met with negativity
NADIYA ON HER FEAR OF SPEAKING OUT
ELEBRITY baker Nadiya Hussain has revealed she received a torrent of racist abuse after she posted a Cornish pasty recipe online where she replaced traditional swede with apple.
The 35-year-old, who shot to fame after winning The Great British Bake Off in 2015, said being hounded by social media trolls over her interpretation of the savoury snack really affected her.
Nadiya added that she has faced more racism since winning the hit show than she has in the rest of her life.
But she said she is gradually learning the importance of calling it out.
The mum of three, whose first solo baking show will air soon on BBC2, said: “I got so much abuse on social media. What I constantly read was, ‘What gives you the right to make a Cornish pasty?’ And that really affected me.
“I’ve definitely experienced more racism in the last five years than I have in my whole life. People get away with being racist and if you say, ‘Well, that was racist’, then it’s, ‘Take it on the chin’, or, ‘Oh, she’s got a chip on her shoulder’.
“There’s definitely a sense that I should be grateful for what I do.
“I’ve had to learn to have a thicker skin over the last few years, but I’ve also learnt that it’s really important to voice things and not just hold back.”
Emboldened by the Black Lives Matter movement, she’s recently started to talk more about what it’s like being one of the few women of colour and faith on primetime TV.
Nadiya, who lives with her family in Milton Keynes, said: “I’ve experienced racism throughout my life in different situations, be it job interviews, college, school.
“I now work in an industry that’s very much middle-aged, Caucasian, male – and there I am, a 5ft 1 Muslim brown girl, and it’s not my world.
“We have to question why there aren’t more people of colour working in television, publishing, the hospitality industry.
“I did not see myself reflected on television. How could I possibly aspire to be a part of something I never saw myself in? So the problem starts there.
“There’s not enough diversity in television and publishing, which means people do not aspire to work in those jobs. Now people say to me, ‘My daughter wants to do exactly what you’re doing’, and that is a lovely thing to hear.”
She added: “I find speaking out hard, because if I ever feel like I’m complaining about anything, I have this godawful fear that nobody will want to work with me ever again. So I’m really scared. The times that I have called it out, I’ve met with some serious negativity but I’m trying to get better.”
During lockdown, the pastry queen decamped to a house in Devon with a camera crew to film her new show, Nadiya Bakes, and spent a fortnight whipping up cakes, tarts, biscuits, breads and pastries.
But the star, who has spoken openly in the past about her lifelong struggle
with anxiety, admits lockdown was detrimental to her mental health and there were days when she couldn’t get out of bed.
Nadiya, who is mum to Musa, 13, Dawud, 12, and Maryam, nine, said: “It became, ‘Am I so anxious I need to bake a cake or can I avoid it today?’ Lockdown caused a massive decline in my mental health, and I have really, really bad days and sometimes I have really good days.
“We know lots of people who have been diagnosed with Covid. We also know people who are not following the rules, so there’s this constant anxiety, which has been really tough.
“I have really big down days, where it dawns on me that we could get to the end of the year and still not have seen our families. We’ve got two boys with asthma so we’re being really careful.”
It might be five years since she presented her bakes for Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry’s scrutiny, but she’s been anything but idle since she was crowned A Bake Off champion. s well as numerous television series, she’s written cookbooks, children’s books, fiction and an autobiography, put her name to a homeware collection and baked a cake for the Queen.
Nadiya said she gets her work ethic from her parents, who emigrated from Bangladesh to Luton, where her father owned an Indian restaurant.
She said: “They didn’t fit in, so they had to work 10 times harder to achieve a lot less than the people around them.
“Even now, my mum works six days a week, doing 12-hour shifts in a linen factory where she cleans hospital linen. She tells me, ‘Don’t ever talk about my job. I don’t want to embarrass you’, but I’m proud of what she does and the fact that she is one of the people keeping this country going.
“They also taught me to be frugal. Saving, budgeting, never wasting.”
Last year, Nadiya was awarded an MBE for services to broadcasting and the culinary arts – but despite her fame she remains in the same house, has not bought an expensive car and shuns red carpet affairs.
She said: “I quite like that nothing really does change.
“I get asked so often to red carpet parties and I always say no because it’s just not where I’m comfortable.
“We get asked to go to the premieres of cartoons and my daughter hates that I don’t say yes to every single one.
“There’s a balance that you have to strike with your kids, so they don’t get caught up in the glitzy part of it all. For me, it’s really important for them to be rounded human beings with good morals and I hope that I’m teaching them those things.”
She added: “Maybe I’m just not cut out to be a famous person. I give of myself knowing that somebody will relate to me and say, ‘I get her and I’m not alone’.
“Suffering with mental health and suffering racism is quite isolating, and to be able to share that is therapy for me as much as it is for other people.”
Nadiya also dares to dream about having a career as long as Mary Berry’s “in the hope that if I get to do this into my 80s, that there will be a stream of women just like me who can say, ‘I did it because she did’”. ●Read the full interview in this week’s Radio Times.