IT SOUNDS unlikely, but Glasgow could teach Nadiya Hussain a thing or two about food, she reckons.

“I’m coming to learn,” announces the woman who became an instant national treasure when she won The Great British Bake Off in 2015.

“I’m excited about being in the city, learning all about Scottish produce, finding out what people in Glasgow like to cook and eat.

“It’s why I love doing these shows, because I am learning as I go, and I get to travel around the UK discovering local food and places I have never visited before.”

She pauses.

“I don’t know much about Scottish food, to be honest, although someone did give me tablet once,” she adds. “It actually nearly blew my head off.

“You really cannot eat a lot of that at any one time, can you?”

Now a much-loved cook, TV presenter and author, Nadiya’s swift rise to stardom was practically guaranteed when she made millions of Bake Off fans sob into their sponge cakes with a moving winner’s speech.

“I’m never going to put boundaries on myself ever again,” she said on the show. “I’m never going to say I can’t do it. I’m never going to say, ‘I don’t think I can.’ I can and I will.”

In person, Nadiya is polite and pleasant, willing to speak frankly about a range of subjects, even though this must surely be the latest in a long line of press interviews ahead of her appearance at the BBC Good Food Show in Glasgow this weekend.

“I will be signing some books and doing a bit of baking,” she says, adding with a laugh: “I’m doing an Eccles cake, so absolutely nothing to do with Glasgow.”

Our conversation happens after a few days of speculation about her mental health, with worried fans commenting on a social media post in which she refers to “a bad couple of days” and being “in a black hole.”

“I take a lot of abuse online when I speak about mental health,” admits Nadiya. “People ask – oh, how can you feel depressed, when you are a celebrity, you are on telly, you have lots of money – you’ve got it good.

“But that’s just not true. Mental health issues affect everyone - poor, rich, all colours, all backgrounds. And it is really important to talk about it.”

Nadiya has suffered from panic disorder – a condition characterised by sudden, intense and often paralysing anxiety attacks – since she was a teenager.

“It affects every day of my life,” she says. “I can’t remember a day without it. But we are not very good, as a society, at sharing the fact we are not coping, or not well.

“I have always been really honest about the fact that I have good days and bad days. You can have all the money in the world, be as famous as you can be, but it doesn’t stop you from being sick.”

Nadiya was born in Luton on Christmas Day in 1984, the third of six children to British-Bangladeshi parents. She got the chance to explore her heritage in the TV series, The Chronicles of Nadiya – part travelogue, part food show.

“My parents were first generation British Bangladeshis – my grandparents could not speak English,” she says. “Me and my brothers and sisters were the pathway to a different life, in a way. We bridged the gap between Britain and Bangladesh.

“Growing up between two cultures was hard at times, especially as a girl, when you were not allowed to do so much in the community.

“I was forever being told, you can’t do that; you mustn’t do this. But I think all those hurdles and barriers which were put in front of me are part of what makes me the person I am.”

A clever and successful student at school and college, Nadiya planned to be a social worker, but did not get the chance to go to university.

In 2005, at the age of 20, she wed her husband Abdal and the couple now have two sons, Musa, 12, and Dawud, 11, and an eight-year-old daughter, Maryam.

“Musa loves to cook, Dawud has just discovered food so maybe it will happen soon for him too, and Maryam loves to bake,” says Nadiya.

Life is busy with three children and four chickens to look after. Nadiya runs, not – she says – because she enjoys it, but because it helps with her anxiety.

She adds: “My perfect night in is a hot bath, a good book and a takeaway.

“Motherhood, anxiety, this industry – it is a bad combination. Children can be the thing that sets off the panic disorder, as well as the thing that eases the pain.

“Mothers are made to feel guilty often. I have a job I love, but it takes me away from home, and that makes me feel guilty.

“But I really love going home and shutting the door – no therapy can ever be as good as that.”

Nadiya Hussain is at the BBC Good Food Show in Glasgow’s SEC on Saturday, October 20.

bbcgoodfoodshow.com