Nadiya Hussain responds to critics

[PruthePrune]

Nadiya Hussain responds to critics

I can understand her being upset that her shows have been axed, apparently ratings were falling, However, I find it hugely disappointing that she has brought race/religion into it. No one is entitled to a BBC show and I think she has had a bloody good run. AIBU?

Precisely

I've no doubt there are a few who are nasty enough to think she's just an ungrateful immigrant, but there'll always be ugly views around and that hardly taints those who see this as simply an idea who's time has expired

I love her and I think she has great screen presence. But it’s so ill advised to put yourself on camera looking whiny when there are a thousand and one ways her agent could get work for her. Jeez if some of the deadhead talentless Gordie/Chelsea/Essex Shore lot can still be working on TV doing gogglebox and amateur reportage stuff, I’m sure she can!

actually and more broadly I think "Be grateful for what you have/have had" is a shit thing to say to anybody. For Nadiya, hearing it like the background music of her life must be particularly triggering but even without the race and gender overlay I remember wanting to KILL the person who, when my husband died, said "you have to be grateful for the years you had together"

Maybe if more white Brits were like you, the world would be a marginally better place.

I agree there’s no need for her to feel grateful. But that doesn’t mean it’s right, necessarily, for her to feel she’s been treated unfairly. If the ratings weren’t good, why should the show be continued?

Well clearly it’s those “few” that she’s addressing. (I’d argue that it’s likely a lot more than a “few” but, as someone with brown skin, I’m also more likely to notice how many people are like this than someone who doesn’t have to deal with it every day would be.)

I absolutely love Nadiya and I agree with her. I shall continue to support her whatever she does next. God forbid a brown Muslim woman should have opinions!

I don’t know much about her. The only thing I recall is the dreadful, lopsided cake that she made for the Queen’s last Jubilee.

That’s an interesting point.
I‘m an immigrant in the UK and I‘ve been noticing people saying things like „we‘re lucky enough to be able to do X/ we‘re grateful for the opportunity to do Y“ quite frequently.

Hasn't she done well for having a cooking show on telly for 10yrs!

She maybe needs to access counselling to help work through some of the negative attitudes that her family forced on her as a child. She seems to be projecting massively here.

I agree with this - and also with

She can be as disappointed as she wants - privately. Publicly she should be professional and gracious if she wants to carry on with a media career.

Not many Bake Off winners achieve a single TV series, let alone 10 years. If she wants her TV career to continue, she should be professional in public and in private sit with her agent, analyse why her ratings were falling and work out the next steps.

If people ‘responded to critics’ that are not seen and just in comments not statements we’d be in a cycle of grievance all the time. Some do do this as part of their message, I can think of a couple on IG who do, but it’s so relentless for anyone that it’d fill up papers to cover it.

She is exactly right. She shouldn’t have to act as if they did her a massive favour: the BBC used her for their own benefit, and now it’s no longer good for them they dropped her. That’s okay, that’s how businesses work. But she doesn’t have to be pathetically grateful for the scraps they deigned to throw her.

Gah, I absolutely hate it when people blame their race/religion, for failure. How must your brain work, if you reduce everything to that? You must never acknowledge any failure on your own part, or take any responsibility for ANYTHING. And yet, quite often the same people are given an advantage in job applications and in their careers, in the name of "inclusion". Oh, the irony.

@bridgetreilly scraps that have helped her earn her millions. I’d like scraps like that!

I absolutely do not get this thing that people dont have to be grateful.
She should be grateful, We should all be more grateful if you ask me.
Grateful she got an opportunity, grateful she was able to work that to her advantage, grateful people watched her, grateful its improved her life and her famillies. And now its over, or changing. Thats life.
So many people these days arent bloody grateful enough and always want more. When are we going to be happy with enough?
You can be disappointed that its over, but grateful you had it.
I do not think thats a bad thing.
Fuckall to do with race colour or creed.

Bake Off brought Mary Berry back into the limelight, only people of a certain age or people who bought her books would have known who she was before then.

You clearly read none of the comments, didn't read the article or watch the video. Because that is not what was said. And if she is a failure, then I want to be a failure too. But why let facts get in the way of a racist rant?

She’s human, and basically said ‘I’m human’. She’s allowed emotions, to feel hurt… and I SO hear the refugee thing as a Ukrainian. I have probably only felt the tiniest fraction, as a white woman, of what she’s lived with, but I must say the narrative shift I’ve experienced from just being me (lived here 20 years) to the bloody ‘gratitude’ expectations in the last few years is horrible. I have some bottled rage, she must have it on a whole next level. The principal of speaking out about her experience… I am behind her and listening. It’s a point to reflect on and acknowledge, regardless of her separate career highs and lows.

Her ratings were poor.

It's meritocracy.

I've lost respect for her after she blamed it on race and religion. I'm so sick of this narrative. Enough.

Well, quite. But the sort of grovelling she is apparently expected to do make it seem like scraps. And, compared to what the BBC will have made from her, it is scraps.

Nancy Birtwhistle is the Bake Off winner I admire most.
Kind, hard working and has such a sunny nature.

Oh please.

I have worked with ED&I for over a decade - promoting it and ensuring it is at the forefront of corporate culture at top FTSE 100 companies.

I will tell you who is at the most disadvantaged in this country - white working class males. That is fact.

she doesn’t have to be pathetically grateful for the scraps they deigned to throw her

I wouldn't call 10 years in a show "scraps", @bridgetreilly, but agree she shouldn't have to act as if they were doing her a massive favour.
That said nobody's said she should, only that she could perhaps be pleased with the excellent run she's had and accept like everyone else that these things come to an end

As you rightly say the BBC used her undoubted talents to suit themselves, though she certainly got a lot out of it in return (and so she should have done).
I'm just sorry that, through her own words, she's handed some the opportunity to claim that the warmth the rest of us so admired only applied when things were going her way

You put it far better than I did.