"Nadiya has done more to further the cause of Asian women - and men - than countless government policies, think-tanks, initiatives and councils put together have achieved in the past half-century".
So writes Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in the Daily Mail about Great British Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussain.
Two themes have emerged from the inevitable post Bake Off mediastorm.
One, Nadiya "only won because she was a Muslim". This attracts the inevitable riposte "Nadiya won because she was the best baker". Neither is true. To deal with the riposte first, having watched half the shows, it seemed to me that Nadiya probably wasn't the best baker overall. That was probably the weedy but industrious and imaginative Ian, repeatedly Star Baker earlier in the series. But GBBO is a knock-out competition and Ian floundered at the last.
I'm absolutely sure the programme-makers will have been delighted with Nadiya's win, but it didn't look fixed to me. Where the carpers might have a point though is in Nadiya's selection to the final twelve.
The overwhelming majority of capable amateur bakers in Britain will be middle-aged white women. But the producers know that's a demographic which doesn't make a ratings-winning programme. They want instead a mixture of young and old, both sexes, straight, gay and ethnic minorities, preferably with a couple of fanciable women thrown in.
And, curiously enough that's what they got. The final twelve had a couple of middle aged white women but also a young hipster (out in the first round), a gay man of Asian ethnicity, the delightful Filipino chap Alvin, a young mixed race woman, the beautiful Flora, the beautiful Lithuanian Ugne, a working class builder, the ingenious Ian and Nadiya with the headscarf.
I bet when they saw Nadiya's application and realised she could actually cook they thought all their Christmases had come at once.
There will have been plenty of other middle-aged white women just as competent as Nadiya who didn't make the twelve because their profile didn't fit. But they didn't fail because they weren't headscarf-wearing Muslims. They failed because they didn't tick any of the other boxes either.
The producers will have dozens of eligible candidates. They pick the ones they want. If there was one of the twelve who really shouldn't have been there it was the hat-wearing musician Stu, who fell at the first hurdle. There will have been dozens of better bakers than Stu who didn't fit the programme's diverse agenda. That's showbiz.
The second thing that's struck me post-Bake Off is the Nadiya's-win-proves-multiculturalism-is-OK trope of which the Alibhai-Brown article is an example. Liberal Britain seems to be having a Nadiya moment just now, frothing from every orifice in a jouissance of feel-goodery.
I think that actually Nadiya's instant elevation to National Treasure proves the reverse.
What has been so delightful about getting to know Nadiya (via the admittedly tricksy medium of reality TV) has been the revelation that this person, beneath the chador which many find off-putting, is just like us. Ah, we think. Good old Muslims! They like baking too! And, with it, "how liberal we are!"
But actually the point about Nadiya is that she is not a typical chador-wearing Muslim woman. She is strongly atypical. For one thing, her husband Abdal let her go out and mix with other people (and associate with gay men). Moreover he took over the childcare while she was doing it. Not unknown, but not routine either.
If you still think Nadiya is typical, consider her valedictory words. "I'm never going to put boundaries on myself ever again", she said, after winning. "I'm never going to say I can't. I'm never going to say maybe". Admirable perhaps, but a sentiment more Californian than Koranic.
Further, our relief at Nadiya's Britishness (her cake! her self-deprecation!) is relief at her similarity to us. And similarity is not what multiculturalism is about. Instead it is about celebrating difference. It's about saying, "well that lot don't behave like the rest of us, but we respect that and will go along with it".
The outpouring of affection for Nadiya arises from a feeling which is the polar opposite. "Thank God she's the same as us", it says.
Nadiya deserved it on the night and I'm glad she won, but her popularity is the best demonstration I've ever seen both of the weakness of multiculturalism and the failure of its most ardent admirers to understand what it really is.
