Nadiya Hussain and her family forced to seek police protection after racist abuse and threats

The Great British Bake Off winner has had to go to extreme lengths to protect herself and family for hateful and harmful messages

Nadiya Hussain

by Closer staff |
Published on

We loved everything about Nadiya Husssain during her time on the Great British Bake Off, from her mouth-watering bakes to her hilarious facial expressions. A worthy winner indeed.

But sadly, her talent and loveable character wasn’t what got the attention of some of the BBC Two show's viewers, as she received a considerable amount of racial abuse while taking part in the competition.

In fact, the abuse Nadiya, 31 , received during the show for being a British Muslim was so extreme that she had to enlist for police protection, she has recently revealed.

Nadiya takes her seat on the Loose Women panel
Nadiya takes her seat on the Loose Women panel

The married mother-of-three opened up about the ordeal on Loose Women yesterday. She said:

"There was quite a lot of negativity on Twitter. I tried really hard not to look at it.

"My husband is one of those who has to read everything, so he sat there and read everything.

"You can do two things, and the old me would have very much regretted everything, and there were times when I thought, 'What have I done? Am I putting my kids in danger?' and he was always the one to just say, 'It's okay. They're such a minority and it doesn't matter'."

"And if anything, I proved to myself that I can have the confidence not to care what people think. For me, that's what came out of it all.

When guest pannelist Vicky Pattison asked her if her security had to be steeped up she said:

"We had to have people come in to check that we were ok. For me some of the tweets I looked at I was like 'oh that's fine'.

"But everyone wanted to know we were safe and we were ok and well."

"It was [scary for me] but my kids loved it. They were like, 'Ooooh - policemen'."

But in better news, the star baker did say that she is currently working on a cookbook that is set to hit shelves in June.

We can’t wait!

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