“I’m making space for women like me

I’m like, “Who? Me? Are you kidding?”,’ Nadiya Hussain confides. ‘There are moments when I say to myself, “OK, this is silly now. You’re all playing a big prank!”’ Hussain first revealed herself to be a breath of fresh air when she delivered that goosebump-inducing ‘I can and I will’ speech on winning Bake Off in 2015. Since then, she’s hosted cookery shows, created a 90th birthday cake for the Queen, fronted a batch of BBC documentaries, released several bestselling cookbooks and a memoir, been awarded an MBE and become an icon of culinary creativity on a global scale.

‘I was in Louisiana, in the bayous on a boat looking for alligators, when the guy we were with turned to me and said: “My niece is texting to say she loves you.” I couldn’t believe it,’ recalls Hussain, when we meet over video call late one morning. ‘Another time, I was in a tiny independent chocolate shop and a lady came up to me, saying, “You sound like Nadiya…” and I’m like, “That’s because I Nadiya!” – and she was so excited. I think of America as untapped territory – until I’m on the ground and I realise it’s not. America is quite the beast, so to have my