By Kelly-Anne Taylor

Published: Wednesday, 31 August 2022 at 12:00 am

On this week’s Radio Times cover is Bake Off winner and chef extraordinaire Nadiya Hussain.

Opening up about her work to Radio Times magazine, she explains that she has finally come to terms with the fact that she’s really good at what she does – but that doesn’t stop her proud parents from regarding her TV career as no more important than her sisters’ jobs in teaching and working in a pharmacy.

The Bake Off star – whose new series Nadiya’s Everyday Baking begins on BBC Two next week – also reveals that her parents didn’t allow her to go to university in London to study psychology for fear that she would be corrupted.

Hussain talks about the reaction to her recent statement that she’s a fan of no-waster, “nose-to-tail” eating when it comes to meat, too, which is perhaps something we could all learn from in this economic downturn.

She also touches upon how cooking helped her family deal with the death of her sister-in-law at the age of 34.

“In difficult, dark moments like that it is really tough to function normally,” Hussain said. “It’s the first time I’ve experienced a loss so close to my family and it’s going to affect us forever. But what I did notice was that, even in death, food becomes central. It’s the thing that brings everyone together.

“We were having to accommodate her family, making sure they were fed and looked after. And that was all [through] food. It was, ‘Let’s cook. Let’s make them things that they enjoy.’ It was all food-centred. It put a smile on people’s faces [and] gave them sustenance.”

Also in this week’s Radio Times:

Martin Clunes talks about the end of Doc Martin, why fans of the show should ‘mind their own business’ and why shows like Doc Martin and Men Behaving Badly would never be commissioned today
Tom Jones, Anne-Marie, will.i.am and Olly Murs on their big breaks, having a plan B and whether their younger selves would have appeared on The Voice