'It's taken me 30 years to be happy in my own skin'

Mum of three Nadiya Hussain on suffering colourism in her own family, getting a grip on anxiety and why GBBO is right to go back to basics

- By Gemma Calvert

Had Nadiya Hussain down as a quiet, reserved sort? Think again. A few days before her woman&home shoot, the Great British Bake Off things to smithereens. ‘I broke up TVs, a toilet, computers, glass bottles. It was a real release!’ smiles Nadiya, 38, describing her 30 minutes in a ‘rage room’, an experience where people let off steam with a baseball bat.

For the celebrity cook and her husband, Abdal, 41, the evening was their first proper date since Nadiya won GBBO in 2015, when life became a time-starved juggle of book-writing (18 so far, FYI), cooking shows, brand deals, media interviews and parenting their three kids, Musa, 17, Dawud, 16, and Maryam, 13.

‘We used to do date nights regularly a decade ago, but it was always dinners and that got boring,’ she says, revealing the motive for their off-the-wall date.

And, later, Nadiya unveils another secret – her dirty sense of humour…

‘Past 10 pm, I get inappropriately funny,’ she admits. ‘In our families, you never say “boobs” or “willy”, or talk about periods, but I’m like, “Let’s talk about it all!” – and that’s without drinking!’

There’s never a dull moment in Nadiya’s company, largely because she never hides her truth, and it was this (plus her famous one-liners and facial expressions) that made her a hit in GBBO’s sixth series.