Gregg Wallace has sparked a furious backlash for defending himself against allegations of inappropriate work behaviour.
The 60-year-old presenter has stepped away from the BBC cooking show while an investigation into historic allegations against him takes place. He has been accused by 13 people of making inappropriate sexual comments across several shows over a 17-year period.
This Ex-Newsnight host Kirsty Wark, who alleges he told jokes of a “sexualised nature” on two occasions when she was a contestant on MasterChef in 2011. Wallace has denied making inappropriate sexual comments and his lawyers told BBC News it is entirely false that he engages in behaviour of a sexually harassing nature.
READ MORE:Gregg Wallace posts bizarre three-word update as MasterChef complaints emerge
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He has now described his accusers as “a handful of middle class women of a certain age”. He took to Instagram with a video defending himself against the complaints and claimed he has had no complaints over the past 20 years of working on screens.
However, his video has been blasted by people on social media, with many suggesting the rebuttal was tone deaf. Former MP Anna Soubry was among those to criticise the star’s comments, writing on X: “It’s yer ‘ormones luv’ Gregg 2gs Wallace proving he’s not an odious misogynist.”
A second complained: “Gregg Wallace explaining how he is totally innocent and it’s all the fault of ‘middle-class women’.” A third asked: “Who advised Gregg Wallace to say complaints were coming from women ‘of a certain age’?!?! Has he really got no idea of how that would sound?!”
(Image: AFP/Getty Images)
A fourth typed: “I don’t think Gregg Wallace’s defence of “At the end of the day, the women who made these allegations about me are miserable old cows” is going to win him any sympathy.” And another didn’t hold back as they wrote: “I bet Gregg Wallace thinks that he’s done a good job of rebutting the allegations against him. All he’s done is show what a misogynistic p***k he is.”
Another referenced the fact that Sir Rod Stewart had slammed Gregg for allegedly ‘humiliating’ his wife Penny Lancaster when she was a contestant on MasterChef in 2021. The X user wrote: “Will somebody please shut Gregg Wallace up. I always knew what a vulgar and brash man he is but his latest broadside at a handful of women of a certain age making allegations really does take the biscuit. Rod Stewart got it absolutely right.”
In the video, Gregg said: “I’ve been doing MasterChef for 20 years. Amateur, Celebrity and Professional MasterChef. And in that time, I have worked with over 4,000 contestants of all different ages, all different backgrounds, all walks of life. And apparently now, I’m reading in the paper, there’s been 13 complaints in that time. In the newspaper I can see the complaints coming from a handful of middle class women of a certain age, just from Celebrity MasterChef. This isn’t right.”
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In a separate video, he said: “In 20 years of television, can you imagine how many women, female contestants, on MasterChef have made sexual remarks or sexual innuendo. Can you imagine?” And in a further video message to fans, he commented: “This is important to me.
“Twenty years of doing Celebrity MasterChef, Amateur, Professional, Eat Well For Less, Inside the Factory… Do you know how many staff, all different sorts of staff, can you imagine the people I’ve worked with? Do you know how many staff complained about me in that time? … Absolutely none. Zero. Seriously.”
His comments come as officials have made a big move in the investigation of the complaints against Wallace. MasterChef’s production company Banijay UK has recruited a top law firm, Lewis Silkin, to spearhead the probe into alleged inappropriate behaviour by host Gregg on the set of the hit BBC cookery show.
Banijay UK says Wallace is “committed to fully co-operating” with an external review. A BBC spokesman said: “We take any issues that are raised with us seriously and we have robust processes in place to deal with them.
“We are always clear that any behaviour which falls below the standards expected by the BBC will not be tolerated. Where an individual is contracted directly by an external production company we share any complaints or concerns with that company and we will always support them when addressing them.”
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
