by Sarah Rainey
LI kE many schoolgirls, Nadiya Jamir Hussain spent most of her lessons gazing wistfully out of the window. Unlike most schoolgirls, however, the 12-year-old wasn’t dreaming of clothes or teenage crushes — but rather of pastry, biscuits and cakes after being inspired by her new Home Economics teacher at Challney High School for Girls, a comprehensive in Luton.
What nobody at the time could have realised, of course, was that this new passion for baking would this week see Nadiya, now 30 and a mum of three, propelled into the final of The Great British Bake Off as the favourite to win.
Certainly if last week’s chocolate peacock showstopper and sublime peanut tart are anything to go by, Nadiya stands a very good chance of stealing the crown, even if Mary Berry has let slip that the final is close and difficult to call.
‘Usually there is a bit of a disaster, but this time it is very exciting, because as a viewer you won’t know. You will be surprised,’ she revealed tantalisingly at the weekend.
Whatever happens, Nadiya is already a heroine in her home town of Luton where she’s seen as a glowing role model for young Muslims at a time when the immigrant community is struggling to shake off the dark spectre of Islamic extremism.
The daughter of a hard-working Bangladeshi couple who moved to England in the Seventies, Nadiya is devout and wears a headscarf known as a hijab. At first, she worried it would shape viewers’ opinions of her. ‘I was a bit nervous that perhaps people would look at me, a Muslim in a headscarf, and wonder if I could bake,’ she says.
‘But I hope that people have realised that I can — and just because I’m not a stereotypical British person, it doesn’t mean that I am not into bunting, cake and tea.
‘I’m just as British as anyone else, and I hope I have proved that.’
She certainly has, amassing a devoted fanbase who call themselves ‘Nadiyators’. She now has 22,100 followers on Twitter as well as a website dedicated to her humorous facial expressions.
Yet astonishingly, until her first cookery lesson in Year Ten, Nadiya had never baked and there wasn’t even an oven at the tiny terrace house she shared with her two brothers and three sisters.
She fondly recalls making puff pastry in her first class with Jean Marshall, who was providing maternity cover for the Year Ten Home Economics teacher.
‘I remember Mrs Marshall saying I was really good,’ she says. ‘I got so into it that when she used to prepare for her next class at lunchtime, I would sneak in and watch her. She never minded. Eventually she said I could give her a hand.
‘She allowed me to learn how to bake some of the simplest recipes. She had to push me out the door when the bell rang because I was that reluctant to leave.
‘Once I had made a few recipes, she kept saying I had a spark. She used to say: “You are the best in the show. But then, in week four, when she created a gravity- defying fizzy pop cake, the tables started to turn and last week’s peanut butter chocolate tart even earned her a coveted handshake from judge Paul Hollywood. Meanwhile, her gentle manner and warm, witty nature has captured our hearts.
But as her tears throughout the series show, this competition is no joking matter to Nadiya.
Her parents, Jamir Ali and Asma Begum, came to Britain to escape poverty in the village of Bhadeshwar, Bangladesh. They married in 1982, settling in a three-bedroom, red-brick terrace yards from Luton Central Mosque.
Nadiya’s sisters Jasminara and Sadiya were born within two years — and on Christmas Day 1984, Nadiya Begum was born. Two boys, Jakir and Shakir, and another girl, Yasmin, followed.
Her father worked as a waiter in a Bangladeshi restaurant and later in the restaurant of Champneys health spa in nearby Tring, Hertfordshire, where he is still employed.
Growing up, Nadiya was puzzled by