PLATELL'S PEOPLE: Why I fear for Nadiya now she's a celebrity

Saturday October 10, 2015

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Nadiya Hussain is now the nation’s new sweetheart, the goddess of The Great British Bake Off, as sweet and delectable as her irresistible lemon drizzle wedding cake.

It wasn’t just Mary Berry who had to stifle tears at Nadiya’s triumph. We were all moved watching the happily married stay-at-home mother-of-three win after she had finally decided to break out from domesticity and do something for herself.

Nadiya herself admits she was the unlikeliest of winners: ‘I was nervous that people would look at me, a Muslim in a headscarf, and wonder if I could bake.’

Her self-deprecation and honesty were always part of her appeal during the competition. As were her expressive eyebrows — she calls them ‘animated’ — which now have a social media site dedicated to them.

The diminutive young mother said she walked on to the Bake Off set a small person and left as a giant, not least because of the encouragement of her husband Abdal, who urged her to go on the show and supported her throughout.

And now Abdal — who was briefly shown in a film clip on Bake Off struggling as a house husband looking after the kids in Nadiya’s absence — has his own fans. It seems social media’s gone into meltdown as they swoon over him, describing him as an ‘absolute dreamboat’ and ‘stone-cold totty’.

With book deals and possible TV shows, and agents predicting earnings of £1 million or more, this unassuming family’s contented existence will change for ever.

And while I’m thrilled for Nadiya, I do also fear for her now she and her family have been catapulted into the seductive, cynical world of celebrity.

Ask Bake Off presenter Paul Hollywood how it turned his head. He left his wife of 15 years for vacuous U.S. chef Marcela Valladolid, and was forced to come crawling back, calling the affair the biggest mistake of his life.

One of the many appealing things about Nadiya is her solid bedrock of home and family, of traditional values. She is the daughter of a Bangladeshi couple who moved to England in the Seventies to escape poverty.

Let us hope she and her ‘dreamboat’ husband are grounded in those values, and are sufficiently level-headed not to let fame destroy what they have. And that, while she can become a celebrity Domestic Goddess (and how nearly stardom destroyed Nigella Lawson!), she remains first and foremost a goddess in her own home.

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