– Her facial expressions basically made the whole show. Gone are the days where Mary Berry’s sexual innuendoes (bless her heart) made everyone crack up. Nadiya’s face morphed into shapes we didn’t know were possible and she did it just at the right time, without even knowing it. We felt her despair when things went a little tits up and we were chuckling away with her when things went right. She was the Queen of facial expressions.
– She won it for the self-doubters. Being someone who sometimes has a lack of self confidence in her day to day life, it was great to see Nadiya blossom from the shy flop in Week 1 (coming bottom of the class… who’d have thunk she’d be crowned winner?) to someone who actually stood back at the end, trophy and flowers in hand, and told the camera ‘I can, and I will’. Every person in Britain had an enormous sense of girl power at that moment when they silently mouthed ‘you go, girl’ and did a mini fist pump (or a rather large one in my case) from the comfort of their sofa.
– Her inspiring winner’s speech. Pretty much the same as above, she gave her little tearful speech at the end but it wasn’t corny and it wasn’t cheesy – it made her finally realise she can kick butt and achieve something if she puts her mind to it.
– She juggled being Queen of the Bakes with being a mum to three. And she juggled it well. When the camera panned to shots of her family life, a chaotic one at that (and her hot husband – hubba hubba….) we all had an overwhelming fuzzy feeling in our stomachs. She didn’t just do it for the anxious and the self-doubters, she did it for the full-time mums who need to put time aside to do something for themselves every now and again. Okay, so maybe not go on the BBC and win a prime time show, but taking out an hour every now and again to do something you love.
– Her dismissal of the usual Daily Mail racial-vomit that came out to play. Okay, so by dismissal I mean she’s totally ignored the drivel we all expected from the Daily Mail (“Poor Flora Shedden never stood a chance. She was far too middle class…. If she’d made a chocolate mosque she’d have stood a better chance.”) Urgh. Of course we knew it was coming, but Nadiya didn’t win Bake Off because she wore a hijab, she won it because she won the hearts of the nation. If we’d watched the Bake Off blind, not only would we not have seen what everyone made but she’d still have won, in my opinion. Although we wouldn’t have seen those classic facial expressions of hers.
– She was simply down to earth. Yes, she made mistakes. No, she wasn’t perfect like Ian ‘star baker three weeks in a row’ Cumming but she was just normal. And darn funny.
Reasons why... 