DID YOU KNOW? Nadiya Hussain

As the 2015 winner of The Great British Bake Off continues to reveal her Family Favourites (8pm, BBC2), here are some things you might not know about the popular cook…

Nadiya was born on Christmas Day in 1984. She is a second-generation British Bangladeshi, raised with her three sisters and two brothers in Luton, Bedfordshire. Her father was a chef, who owned an Indian restaurant.

Her mother never baked, and used the oven for storage! Nadiya learned basic cooking skills as a pupil at Challney High School for Girls, and then honed her skills by reading recipe books and watching videos on YouTube.

The first thing she ever baked was puff pastry. ‘I remember being hooked from that point on – all I wanted to do was bake. It was a recipe that I made with my teacher in home economics class. It was at this point I realised that the concept of baking was entirely new to me, but I enjoyed it so very much.’ She married Abdal Hussain, whom she had only met once before, in an arranged marriage; they married in a traditional ceremony in Bangladesh when she was 20. They have two sons and a daughter.

The mother of three really values family time, and puts every family member’s phone in a box in the office at 6pm so the devices don’t provide any distractions. To stop herself from putting on weight, when she’s not working, Nadiya only allows herself to eat one meal a day, at 5pm – as well as going for a daily three-mile jog. ‘Sometimes you need to not talk to anyone,’ she said.