Nadia - stop moaning and get a job.....

[mids2019]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-15628823/Nadiya-Hussain-attack-BBC-cancelled-difficult-conversations.html

I think this woman needs her to realise her star has fallen like a lot of minor celebs. She has had a good run and everything has did was tired. New cookery blood should be allowed a chance.

I thinks it's undignified to start accusing her erstwhile employers of racism.

I think everyone has a shelf life . She’s done well in the spotlight for so long .

She had a good 10 years,I thought some of the recipes were not that good TBH, she lost me when she crumbled Wotsits on macaroni and cheese. I mean, why?
She did better than lots of people on Bake Off or whatever it was.

Every winner of those TV shows is on a time limit and she is no different. In all honesty, she had a lot longer than many. I agree, she needs to get a job now (which I saw she did as a TA but her immune system meant she was constantly sick so she quit).

And yet half the time people are complaining the BBC is too ‘woke’ for diversity in the shows they make, this doesn’t fit that narrative does it?

^^ Absolutely this
Or James Martin

Very telling indeed. No one is owed a TV show but she has a point and her opportunities and popularity seemed to decrease after she stopped doing her hair in a turban (more modern and western/mainstream culture) and moved to a hijab.

I thought she seemed charming and funny and likeable on Bake Off. But her delivery is a bit flat away from that.
Maybe the whole celebrity chef thing has just had its' day.

I really enjoyed her travel programme where she went back to her roots. I think she can be very engaging. I wonder if she never quite found the right vehicle. She went to work as a TA in a school, but didn't last long. I hope she can get support and find a way forward. She is talented and hard working.

I watched a few of her shows. Pulled banana skins looked horrible and she made apple pies using bought pastry and jar apple sauce. There wasn’t much usable cooking inspiration or fun aspiration type stuff so I didn’t watch more. She always came across as friendly and quite nice but I don’t think she’s an amazing cook and I don’t think her recent comments will make other people keen to hire/commission her. If it doesn’t work out they know she’ll accuse them of racism.

The socials are there for her to do her own thing, she can cook on insta and her fans will find her.

I never got the love for Nadiya at her peak although I am a cookbook and cookery programme person.

She didn't make me want to make one of her recipes and I agree with a PP, too many of them were weird.

I would have bought a cookbook about Eid as a non-Muslim because I'm interested in world cuisne - however I looked at hers and again, it was just not good. Too many recipes with her 'own unique spin' on them which is always putting a random ingredient in that makes it unappetizing.

Personally I think she had a good run but cookery programmes aren't that popular currently and she isn't good enough to be in the cookbook market without a TV show.

No such thing as a racism card
There is racism, on a structural/cultural and personal level
Very difficult to speak up on discrimination when it is assumed people go around looking for ‘cards’ to pull.
Believe me, most people aren’t going around looking to be discriminated against, rubbing their hands waiting for the experience to capitalise on.

Lorraine Pascal? She's great. I think she works on the US Food Network. She's still working.

I cringe at that card thing. Like somebody is playing a game.

All of them qualified chefs who also run restaurants and have spent years honing their craft…unlike Nadia.

Well aren't you delightful? Which part of 'be kind' passed you by?

Why are posters insisting on spelling her name wrong?

She has a job in a school.

I liked her programmes, especially the one where she toured Britain. I find her amusing and engaging.

I'm sick to death of seeing the same presenters on the BBC.

There is growing Muslim anti-sentiment in this country, it will have affected Nadiya, she has a right to talk about her views on her religion and being a woman.

Why do we want to beat down other women who are just trying to do something completely harmless like a cookery show that is actually about cooking?

Honestly, we've just had international women's day and this is where we are at?

What Nadiya said does ring true, especially looking at the title of this thread.

'Unfortunately, as a woman – and a woman of colour – if you speak up, often it's considered "being difficult" or "being a nuisance", whereas I know, from experience, that if I was a man, they'd be like: "Oh, you know what he's like"'.

I like Nadiya and agree that she has had a very good run for a TV show winner. I think there is some truth in what she says about the way she has been treated. Alongside this, she strikes me as an unhappy person who is searching for her inner peace. Nadiya has spoken openly about her mental health issues that she has had since childhood so I do hope she is being well supported in rl.

TV presenters fall in and out of fashion on a regular basis. Those with longevity in the business know this and will pivot accordingly. Nadiya could do really well if she concentrated on using social media moving forward. Especially TikTok.

Presumably this book?

Its the sort of thing I would buy, Im neither Muslim nor Arabic, but then I love food and cooking. I am not the audience probably, the BBC wants to capture as a fly by night watcher, they want to appeal to the widest demographic.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rooza-journey-through-inspired-Ramadhan/dp/0241678234/ref=asc_df_0241678234?mcid=ea8ed6646088328caf0362bb29cb05f0&tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=702305953565&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=17443108320726581636&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9045060&hvtargid=pla-2356835401891&psc=1&hvocijid=17443108320726581636-0241678234-&hvexpln=0&gad_source=1

I think there is something to this, but what we are seeing is scandal after scandal involving TV chef/presenters. It has undermined the genre to the extent that many broadcasters are now wondering whether it hasn’t run its course. There are lots of chef/presenters [male and female] for who the work has now dried up.

Famous chefs’ restaurants are struggling and closing, the CoL means people are looking for cheap affordable cooking tips, WLI mean that people are less inclined to bake/cook as much now. I think ‘Food Porn’, as my DH calls it, no longer pulls the audience in in the same way it once did and that audience is more expert/less naive now after decades of these shows. I think it is less about her sex/faith and more about the trend. She has done well for a average Jo off the street who won a TV cookery show. She either needs to reinvent herself or accept that the bubble has deflated, if not burst, and not impose an intersectional discrimination lens on this. It won’t help her.

The BBC hasn’t commissioned any new cookery shows for 2026 at all. It’s Masterchef The Professionals (reality competition), Great British Menu (another reality competition) and Saturday Kitchen (lots of old clips as filler). Reality shows are cheaper to produce so that’s what we get now instead of more traditional style shows.

I like her very much.

I think there are separate things, aren't there - when she's talking about racism, examples she gives are things we wouldn't know about without being told, such as that she was expected to wear her headscarf a certain way as it was thought audiences would prefer it. We won't know about that 'behind the scenes' stuff and I can absolutely see it might well be both racist and sexist.

It still really annoys me how few women making it into the food industry - anything like Masterchef professionals or GBM, when I watch it with my daughter, I feel I'm constantly saying 'yes, I know, there are no women again'. I think we've got accustomed to seeing relatively few women doing food on TV and we blank out the fact there are lots of men who (as a few PP have said), can get a bit lazy and rest on their laurels.

Don't get me started on the fact that dear Nigel (whose early books I loved) seems now to have branched out into gardening, about which he clearly knows less than nothing. That is a real triumph of mediocre-white-man confidence over ability or knowledge!

I tend to think if someone claims they've been discriminated against, it's worth considering they might be right, rather than just dismissing it out of hand.