Nadiya Hussain: Great British baker

Of course I’m a big fan of legislative measures that protect people’s rights from being abused and discriminated against. As we’ve seen in the last five years, we need those rights and protections even more when a nation goes through deep austerity measures. Powerful people and powerful institutions will, at the blink of an eye blame the weakest, sow division and do whatever they deem necessary to avoid accepting any responsibility for the financial state we’re in.

And yet from time to time something quite magical cuts through all of the above to show humanity at its brilliant best.

When Nadiya Hussain won last night’s Great British Bake Off, she won much more than the nation’s most popular TV competition. This young Muslim mother, proudly wearing her hijab won the nation's heart and soul, and in doing so she spectacularly helped recalibrate the view of what it is to be a Muslim woman.

I’ll confess, unlike millions I never watched a single episode of the series, but I did watch glimpses of her winning on Breakfast TV. When she won she cried. She cried as my son would say, ‘crying happy’. This the reporter suggested was a feature of Nadiya, not crying, but wearing the feelings, good and bad, on her face.

My guess, therefore, might be that Nadiya was not only a brilliant baker, but was truly endearing, to which the viewers clearly embraced.

Put bluntly, perhaps for the first time in British history literally millions of people collectively saw beyond the Hijab and noticed a human being. And before you accuse me of hyperbole, hours before the final, The Prime Minister himself referenced in his Party conference speech, how ‘disgraceful’ it is that for no other reason than wearing a hijab and being a Muslim a British woman can be so abused.

So well done Nadiya, who would have thought that baking a sumptuous cake with a smile could help challenge perceptions and in doing so nudge race equality forward.

And well done to the makers too for showcasing multicultural Britain at its very best.

Simon Woolley