LONDON – Nadiya Hussain, the winner of last year’s Great British Bake Off, has revealed a shocking fact that racist abuse has become a part of her  life.

“I’ve had things thrown at me and [been] pushed and shoved,” she said on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs on Saturday, August 13.

“I feel like that’s just become a part of my life now. I expect it. Absolutely I expect it.”

“I expect to be shoved or pushed or verbally abused because that happens. It’s been happening for years,” Nadiya, 31, continued.

Being the first female Muslim contestant on British reality TV culinary series, The Great British Bake Off, Hussain naturally attracted a lot of attention.

The 31-year-old mother of three children aged nine, eight and five, became a celebrity after winning the competition that was aired in the UK last October and watched by fifteen million people.

Speaking on BBC radio, she revealed how her life,after September 11 attacks, had changed forever.

Since that date, she has faced abuse, shoving on a daily basis. But she  chose not to retaliate.

“I feel like there’s a dignity in silence, and I think if I retaliate to negativity with negativity, then we’ve evened out,” she said.

“And I don’t need to even that out because if somebody’s being negative, I need to be the better person.

“Because I’ve got young children, the one thing I don’t want my kids to do is have a negative attitude to living in the UK because, yes, there are those negative people, but they are the minority.”

She added: “I love being British and I love living here and this is my home and it always will be.

“Regardless of all the other things that define me, this is my home. And I want my kids to be proud of that, and I don’t want my kids to grow up with a chip on their shoulder.

“So I live as positively as I can and all those things that do happen to me, hey, it happens but it happens to other people too and we deal with it.”

Role Model

Watched by millions of viewers, Nadiya said she was aware of the impact her Bake Off appearance and victory had on some viewers.

“I remember watching that final back and looking around and everyone around me was blubbering – my family, everyone that was watching it with me, they were all crying,” she reflected.

“I know when I said those words why I said them. And I remember the following day I went out and I met a lady – and I’ll never forget it.

“This lady was with her child, maybe eight or nine months old, and said ‘I watched your final and I had been scared to leave the house because I’ve had my baby and I’ve been really afraid to leave with the baby, and I watched the final and I’ve finally left with the baby and this is the first thing I’ve done outside of the house without anybody.’

“So for me I’d realized what had happened at that point, and ever since coming off Bake Off, everybody seems to talk about that last bit, and how they felt the same emotions or in some way related to those words.”

Last January, she was named by Debrett’s as one of the 500 most influential people in the UK.

“I was slightly shocked by that but felt really, really proud,” she said of her inclusion on the Debrett’s list.

“I’ve spent most of my adult existence trying to raise good children and just being a good role model for them, and it’s suddenly become so much more than that.

“I feel like if I continue to be a good role model for my kids, that’s what’s really important because I feel like that will resonate with everyone.”