Nadiya Hussain gets mistakenly recognised as a ‘MasterChef winner when she’s out shopping.
The 33-year-old cooking expert was shot to TV fame when she was crowed the 2015 winner of ‘Great British Bake Off’ and she always has a wry smile when people come up to her to congratulate her on her victory on Gregg Wallace and John Torode’s BBC One show.
Speaking about her moments of recognition, she said: "A man came up to me and he looked me in the face and he said, ‘You work at H&M. And I said, ‘Yes. Yes I do. And about a month ago this lady said, ‘Are you Fatima?’ I said, ‘Nope.’ And I gave her a chance to just kind of come back and say, ‘I think you might be Nadiya off the telly.’ And I didn’t say anything and then my daughter was like, ‘She thinks you’re Fatima! Who is Fatima?’ Ha! But the best one has to be, ‘You’re that girl who won ‘MasterChef’."
Nadiya – who has three children with her husband Abdal Hussain – become one of Britain’s most famous Muslims after winning ‘Bake Off’ but admitted she just wanted to "blend into the background" rather than be a representative of her faith in the aftermath.
But lots more TV work has followed and the ‘Nadiya’s Family Favourites’ host is now proud to be a role model for other British Muslims and is willing to take on the responsibilities that come with her profile.
In an interview with the new issue of Radio Times magazine, the second-generation British Bangladeshi said: "A year after ‘Bake Off’ I would have said I just kind of want to blend into the background and that my wearing a headscarf should be completely incidental. You know, it’s just part of who I am and it shouldn’t be what defines me. But I think, three years on, I understand the importance of it now. I do identify as a Muslim and I do identify as British, as well, and a woman and I’m a woman of colour, and why am I ashamed of that? I used to not want to talk about it … But that is me. And I think in accepting that, I’ve become a lot more comfortable being who I am. I said from the get-go, I’m not the ‘perfect’ anything. I’m, not the perfect Muslim, I’m not the perfect Bangladeshi or the perfect ‘British’ person … I’m just being me, and that’s all I can ever be. But I understand the importance of being a brown, Muslim woman of faith who is in the public eye, because there aren’t that many of us. So I know I’m representing a lot of groups."
Nadiya Hussain gets recognised as a MasterChef winner
