British ‘MasterChef’ Host Responds to Accusations of Inappropriate Behavior

Gregg Wallace, co-presenter of the reality competition series MasterChef UK and its celebrity and professional spinoffs, is going on the defensive amid allegations that he has behaved inappropriate on set.

In a series of Instagram Stories videos on Sunday, December 1, Wallace said that “a handful of middle-class women of a certain age” are behind the allegations. He also suggested female MasterChef contestants made “sexual remarks or sexual innuendo” while filming the show.

“Now I’ve been doing MasterChef for 20 years — amateur, celebrity, and professional MasterChef— and I think, in that time, I have worked with over 4,000 contestants of all different ages, all different backgrounds, all walks of life,” Wallace said in one clip. “And apparently now — I’m reading in the paper — there’s been 13 complaints in that time. Now, 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.”

In another upload, Wallace said, “In 20 years — over 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 after posting comments from social media supporters, Wallace shared more thoughts. “Look, this important to me,” he said in that third video. “20 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, you imagine the people I’ve worked with — do you know how many staff complained about me in that time? … Absolutely none. Zero. Seriously.”

Wallace stepped aside from his MasterChef presenting duties last week after BBC News contacted his representatives regarding a series of allegations that he made inappropriate sexual comments at work. The complaints came from 13 people from a five of TV shows from 2005 to 2022, BBC News added.

BBC Newsnight host and former Celebrity MasterChef contestant Kristy Wark, for example, said Wallace told “sexualized” jokes while filming the show.

“I was actually more angry than anything else, because I thought it was so inappropriate,” Wark added. “And in a sense what I thought was it was about power more than anything else, that he felt he could.”

Former colleagues and coworkers of Wallace’s told BBC News he showed shirtless pictures of himself, asked for massages, asked questions about a coworker’s dating life, talked about his sex life, stared at a female worker’s chest, and said sexually explicit things on set.

Wallace’s lawyers denied the accusations, saying it’s totally false that Wallace behaves in a sexually harassing nature. Banijay UK, the production company behind MasterChef, has launched an investigation and said that Wallace is cooperating.

Related

Rod Stewart Slams 'MasterChef UK's Gregg Wallace as a 'Bully' Amid Host's Misconduct Allegations

Responding to his Instagram comments, actor and Celebrity MasterChef winner Emma Kennedy told BBC News that “it doesn’t matter what the age of any woman is.”

Kennedy added: “If you behave inappropriately, you behave inappropriately. It’s a story as old as the tides that people who have been accused of inappropriate behavior turn the tables on those pointing it out and try and change the narrative.”

And TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp told BBC Radio 4’s The World This Weekend that Wallace’s Instagram comments were “unacceptable” and that he “is essentially saying this is a class issue and middle-class women don’t understand the type of things he says because he’s working-class.”

BBC News also notes that the complaints came from people “across a range of ages.”