28 October 2023 , 07:46
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It’s a bit of a cliche for beauty queens to call for world peace at pageants, but when Madeleine Roche was crowned Miss Great Britain last week, the first mixed-race winner in 78 years of the contest and proudly half Palestinian, peace was genuinely, and heavily, playing on her mind.
After five years of competing in the contest, she recalls the moment her dream finally came true. “I was just closing my eyes and really, really hoping that I’d hear them shout out ‘Madeleine’. When they did it was all a bit of a blank. I just remember thinking ‘Don’t cry, don’t cry. You’ll have really ugly pictures if you cry,” explains the 33-year-old, who is married to Shane Jr, son of the Mirror’s Coleen Nolan and EastEnders ’ actor Shane Richie.
But away from the pageant final, the Israel-Hamas conflict raged on, making her win bittersweet as she feels a responsibility to represent her people. “It’s been really hard when you’re seeing everything that’s going on over there. Any loss of life is really tragic and I found it really emotional, and it really did affect me, is affecting me, as I’m sure it is people all around the world... But hopefully I made my Arabic family proud. I’m just praying for there to be a peaceful solution,” she explains.
Madeleine in beachwear (Instagram/madeleine_roche)Madeleine’s father is Palestinian, and aside from helping her local community in Manchester and doing charity work the beauty queen will soon travel to Jordan to a Palestinian refugee camp where her grandparents lived after escaping war in her new role as Miss Great Britain.
“My family were displaced and they were forced to leave Palestine back in the fifties. My grandfather’s house was bombed and his father was killed and his family had to escape,” she says. “They actually lived in caves on the side of the mountain while they were waiting for an escape route.
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"My grandmother and her family had to live in a fire station after their house was obliterated and they escaped to Jordan. They were refugees there and were granted Jordanian nationalities and passports because they were stripped of their Palestinian ones.” This will be an emotional experience for the newly crowned Miss Great Britain, but she knows the importance of using her platform to help others.
Madeleine after being crowned Miss Great Britain (Instagram/madeleine_roche)“I hundred percent feel so passionately about it. But equally I think it’s so important to take passion out of it and actually come with facts and figures and correct information, which is what I try and do and what I try to share on social media. But at the end of the day, it’s harrowing. Obviously peace and ceasefire is so important. And with that should come equality and basic human rights on both sides.”
Loose Women star Coleen, 58, was in the crowd when Madeleine was crowned winner and says she screamed louder than she ever has in her life. Madeline says: “I’d been practising my walk in Coleen’s kitchen; she gave me the space to do it. But they were so proud and so happy. They were all crying more than I was.”
Coleen, who has been joking she can call herself a Miss GB winner-in-law, said: “I cannot tell you how proud I am of my daughter in new Maddie becoming the new Miss Great Britain. Maddie was the best person for the job.” Madeleine has been competing in pageants since she was young, and this was her fifth attempt at the Miss Great Britain contest.
Madeleine on her wedding day (Madeleine Roche)She explains that she was emboldened to compete to show other girls that there are all different ways to be beautiful. “Growing up there wasn’t really anybody that looked like me in the media or anybody in pageants,” she says. “I thought that it would be amazing to be able to show my little sister and other women everywhere that there is a place for Arab girls.”
Madeleine grew up in Deal, Kent, where there were not many ethnic minorities. “There was my dad and his best friend and that was about it,” she says. “I was bullied a little bit when I was younger due to my ethnicity. So I think that gave me a bit of a step back as to what actually what beauty meant here. Just name calling unkind names.
Being from such a small, predominantly white town was quite hard.” However Madeleine explains that pageants helped her confidence to grow, as did the love of her husband Shane, whom she met seven years ago when his band played at a pageant she was competing in. “He taught me to be more fun, I used to be more uptight. I just prefer the version of myself when I am around him,” she says.