Britain is lovely, says Bake Off ’s Nadiya

Nadiya Hussain has said she initially “struggled” with her identity being so tied to her being a Muslim when she first took part in The Great British Bake Off.

The baker, who won the series in 2015, said that her religion is “incidental” to her, but the response it garnered made her wonder if she was the “token Muslim” on the series. She said that, despite having been subjected to some negativity, she learned how “lovely” the general British public are with their overall reaction towards her.

Ms Hussain, 32, told Radio Times magazine: “I certainly didn’t enter a baking show in the hope of representing anyone.

“Being a Muslim for me was incidental, but from the day the show was launched, I was ‘the 30-year-old Muslim’ and that became my identity. I struggled at the beginning, because I thought, ‘Am I the token Muslim?’ I’d never, in all my years, been labelled like that. I heard it constantly, ‘Oh, she’s the Muslim, she’s the Muslim.’”

Ms Hussain, a second-generation British Bangladeshi, she was “really apprehensive at the beginning because of all the aggressive comments” before realising “what a lovely country I live in”.