It's been eight years since Nadiya Hussain won The Great British Bake Off in 2015 and stole the nation's hearts with her natural on-screen charm - and she has not stopped working ever since. From producing countless TV series and forging a brilliant presenting career, to publishing children's cookbooks and even baking the late Queen's 90th birthday cake, there are very few stars that have seen and achieved as much as her.
But aside from her incredibly cooking skills, there is much to love about the national treasure's humble personality and ways she chooses to live her life off camera. Over the years, Nadiya has shared her daily battle with severe anxiety and opened up about her arranged marriage, plus why she would never accept one for her daughter. Ahead of her popular show BBC2 show, Nadiya's Simple Spices, which airs tonight, we take a look at her off-screen life.
Arranged marriage
Nadiya married her husband Abdal in an arranged ceremony in Bangladesh when she was 19, and during her show, The Chronicles of Nadiya, she admitted that she actually "cried through the whole thing", and that she did not want to go through with it. However, she has since said several times how lucky she feels to have fallen in love with a man chosen for her by her parents. "It's like winning the lottery," she once told the Mirror. "He's unique and I wouldn't be where I am today without him."
Though she has admitted that she wouldn't plan the same for her daughter. "He's a wonderful human and the most supportive man ever - to me and the children. I know everyone says this, but they do have the best dad in the whole world. I am the sister who turns up and never slags off their husband," she said, adding: "That said, I would never accept an arranged marriage for my daughter. I don't have the time. Once they've left home and got on with their own lives, I want to buy a sports car and drive off! I'm still questioning whether I'll take my husband with me. Ask me in a few years!"
On Loose Women, she told the panel that her sisters saw him before she did, and said he was "so good looking" and had an "enormous butt". "So now, when I met him for the first time, the first thing I wanted to look at was his butt. So I was like I've got to check if this arse is as huge as I think it is," she explained. In December 2018, the star baker announced they'd had a second marriage ceremony on Instagram with a selection of photos from the day and the caption: "Nothing fancy just love. No frills. Just us. We did it again. I do. I always will. I would do it all over again #married #secondtime."
Mum life
Nadiya has three children, Musa, 12, Dawud, 11, and Mariam, eight, and tries to teach them all good manners and kindness at home. In 2020, she told the Mirror: "I just want to raise my children with manners. I want them to respect the wisdom of their elders – something I don't see much of in this country. I want my boys to respect women too and value them. I know without a shadow of a doubt, my sons will get married and their wives will come back to me and say you raised one heck of a man. That is my life-long dream, for someone to say I raised a wonderful son. My mother-in-law raised a wonderful son and all respect to her."
It's important for her brood to know how to cook, bake and clean around the house - including the boys - so they will all grow up to be independent adults. "Growing up in my culture, the girls were especially encouraged to cook and clean. It was a generational thing. I knew when I had a family I would not do the same. Every Sunday, all my kids clean the entire house in a three-hour intense clean, including the tops of the door frames," she explained. "Then on Wednesdays, we do a mid-week quick clean like the toilets and mopping the floor. We've also got four chickens, a budgie, a rabbit and a cat, so every morning the kids clean and feed the animals. In between all that they've got to think about praying, homework and teaching."
As busy as her family life is, Nadiya has admitted that her work life got in the way of her quality time with her kids at the start of her career, and she does look back with some regrets. She told the Express: "I try not to regret, but I am human. When I started out, my daughter was five. I have missed certain parts of my kids' lives. I've also been able to find myself and, as they grow, I realise everything I've done has been for a reason."
Hobbies
When Nadiya isn't baking on television, you'll find her whipping up some delicious bakes and meals at home. She previously told the Mirror that you'll likely find her "cooking dinner with the kids or having tea with Abdal and a slice of cake" - either carrot or lemon cake, or a Bourbon biscuit dunked in clotted cream. "I also love watching Gogglebox, it's been a guilty pleasure. I annoy Abdal by talking at the telly," she revealed.
Though, she's no stranger to a cheeky Pot Noodle when she can't muster up the energy to put the oven on. Nadiya said: "The best Sundays start after a late Saturday. The whole family sleep together on the floor in the living room. We get all the blankets out, put a movie on the big telly and watch until we fall asleep. In the morning, we'll make a big breakfast together and take it to our lounge-bed-camping situation... After all that, the evening might just be my guilty pleasure of a Pot Noodle. I have a routine - add soy sauce, a teaspoon of chilli flakes and half a teaspoon of salt. That sounds like a lot, but if I'm going to have a Pot Noodle… I love Chicken & Mushroom, but if I'm feeling really fancy, I'll get a Bombay Bad Boy."
Aside from being a foodie, Nadiya has a different and rather surprising hobby - archery. She took it up after walking in the woods near her Buckinghamshire home and being intrigued by the noise of arrows thudding into targets. "I love to go walking in the woods," she said. "I've just taken up archery recently. It's something they do in our local woods and I could hear the 'th-donkt of the archers every time I walked past. I’m like, 'What's going on there?' My kids said, 'There's an archery range there.' That piqued my interest, so we got licences and our kids got licences. We all now have licences to do archery in the woods. I love it. It's so therapeutic."
Time is precious for Nadiya, who admitted her toxic trait is wanting to always be busy. "My toxic trait is to say, 'Come on, let's go do something' and know, deep down inside, that I want to be in bed by eight, in my pyjamas by seven and have had dinner by six," she told the Mirror.
Difficult past
Nadiya has opened up about the sexual abuse she suffered as a child and her suicide attempt aged 10, and written about them in her memoir Finding My Voice. In a 2020 interview, she explained how these experiences have shaped who she is today: "Our past and experiences are the things we always carry around with us. For such a long time I tried to smile, wear colourful clothes and ignore the fact that those scars were there.
"The difference now having written my memoir is that I feel like the scars are all there, but I can still be the person behind a perfectly polished countertop, with a perfect cake, smiling with joy in my eyes. That's who I am. But the reality is it's not who I am all the time. We can be two versions of ourselves. What I've learnt over the last few years is to be happy with every part of me, whether it be the beautiful bits or the broken bits. It's all me.
"I'm not someone who's good at giving myself praise. And I pay for that in some ways. I can be so productive to a point where I make myself exhausted. We've all been there, especially if you have kids, where you feel it's give, give, give. I've had to teach myself to only do things that mean something to me. It's more than just baking and cooking and being on the telly, for me. As a first-generation British Bangladeshi woman of colour and Muslim, there's no one really like me. There's loads of things close to my heart that I feel like I need to be part of. But that said, I have a young family and I have to balance caring for them. I suffer a lot with mum guilt, don't we all?"
