BBC humiliates Nadiya by axing Mecca pilgrimage

WHEN Channel 4 poached The Great British Bake Off from the BBC, there was speculation that it might hire the hit show’s popular former winner, Nadiya Hussain, as a judge.

Nadiya (below) remained loyal, though, and was rewarded with a deal to make the BBC her ‘home’. Yet now Corporation chiefs have publicly humiliated Nadiya, 33, by axing a two-part BBC1 series very close to her heart — even though it had already been announced publicly with great fanfare.

Called The Hajj, it was due to follow Nadiya from her Buckinghamshire home to Mecca as she joined three million fellow Muslims on the annual pilgrimage to the holy city. The cancellation comes amid claims that the BBC became nervous. ‘The word here is that senior executives got cold feet about promoting Islam,’ an insider tells me. ‘They felt that if we were going to broadcast a programme about a Muslim pilgrimage, we would have to make one about other religious pilgrimages as well.’ Last year, Tory MP Sir Bill Cash criticised the BBC for appointing a Muslim, Fatima Salaria, as its head of religious programming for TV for a second time. He said: ‘It is really important that we have a proper balance.’ When the BBC announced the series last May, it spoke gushingly of how Nadiya was ‘the perfect person to share with viewers her experience of one of the world’s truly great human spectacles’.

It commissioned Top Hat Productions to make the series, and months had been spent obtaining permits from the famously impenetrable Saudi Arabian regime. Top Hat also organised an all-Muslim crew.

‘Unfortunately, it’s not happening,’ confirms Top Hat boss Marisa Verazzo. ‘It’s all very sensitive. We were told at the beginning of last week.’

A BBC spokesman says: ‘While the series is not going ahead in the announced form at present, there is absolutely no truth to the false suggestion that this is due to concerns about promoting Islam.’