Outrage over Gregg Wallace’s alleged conduct has intensified after he dismissed his accusers as “middle-class women of a certain age”, following revelations that the BBC received multiple complaints about him over a period of 12 years.
The corporation and other broadcasters are facing growing questions about how the MasterChef presenter was allowed to remain on screen despite a series of allegations of inappropriate behaviour dating back to at least 2012.
Vera Baird KC, the former victims’ commissioner for England and Wales, accused the BBC of being “in the dark ages” for “tolerating” allegedly sexually inappropriate conduct by its male stars.
“It is shocking that repeatedly we see this kind of behaviour being tolerated by the BBC who do seem to disregard the obligations they have to protect people who go on television,” Baird told the Guardian.
The allegations surrounding Wallace come after the BBC was accused of covering up the Jimmy Savile scandal and controversy over its handling of allegations against Huw Edwards last year.
Wallace, whose lawyers have denied that he engages in sexually harassing behaviour, described his accusers on Sunday as “a handful of middle-class women of a certain age, just from Celebrity MasterChef”.
The broadcaster, who has starred on the BBC’s MasterChef since 2005, claimed he had worked with more than 4,000 contestants on the cookery programme and 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?”
Wallace, 60, alleged that “absolutely none” of the staff on his other shows had complained about him.
He said in an Instagram video: “Look, 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, 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 back from his role on MasterChef last week while allegations of past misconduct – including three of inappropriate touching – are investigated.
Emma Kennedy, the actor and author who won Celebrity MasterChef in 2012 and says she complained about his behaviour at the time, said in response to Wallace’s video: “It doesn’t matter what the age of any woman is.”
Kennedy claims she complained about the presenter to production staff in 2012, alleging he appeared to have touched another woman’s bottom.
“If you behave inappropriately, you behave inappropriately,” she told BBC News. “It’s a story as old as the tides that people who have been accused of inappropriate behaviour turn the tables on those pointing it out and try and change the narrative.”
She added: “Playing the ‘they’re having a go at me because I’m working class’ card is ridiculous.”
The presenter Kirstie Allsopp became the latest to accuse Wallace of making inappropriate remarks on Sunday when she said he had referred to sex acts shortly after meeting her.
Writing on X on Sunday, the co-host of Location, Location, Location, said: “Within one hour of meeting Gregg Wallace he told me of a sex act that he and his partner at the time enjoyed ‘every morning’, she’d just left the room, we were filming a pilot. Did he get off on how embarrassed I was? It was totally unprofessional.”
Allsopp added: “Why say nothing? Because you feel, in no particular order, embarrassed, a prude, shocked, waiting for a male colleague to call him out, not wanting to ‘rock the boat’, thinking it’s better to plough on with the day, assuming you misheard/misunderstood or just don’t get the joke.”
The Labour MP Diane Abbott, the mother of the House of Commons, said Wallace’s robust response to his accusers showed he “doesn’t get it”.
“It’s not a crime to be a middle-class woman of a certain age,” she said. “Back in the day [a man] could touch up women and harass women and it was about power, really. Women weren’t in the position to do anything or say anything. He just doesn’t understand that the world has moved on.”
Harriet Harman, the Labour peer, said: “Older, middle-class women [are] more able to challenge than freelance junior women. It’s our duty.”
Baird, a former senior government minister and barrister, described Wallace’s remarks as “typical behaviour of a sexually predatory male. As soon as he’s criticised for his conduct, he demeans the people who are criticising him, demeans the woman – implying that they’re all delicate flowers, middle class, and all of a certain age.”
Baird described the allegations as “grossly unprofessional” but said she was offended by Wallace’s remarks because “working-class women don’t want men taking their clothes off and talking about sex in front of them either”.
On Sunday night a former MasterChef contestant told Sky News the allegations against Wallace were the “tip of the iceberg”. An investigation by BBC News revealed that Wallace was facing allegations of inappropriate sexual comments from 13 people who worked with him over a 17-year period.
In 2017, a BBC executive warned Wallace about his behaviour after complaints were made by the broadcaster Aasmah Mir. Further complaints resulted in a formal HR investigation in 2018 which found that “many aspects of [Wallace’s] behaviour were both unacceptable and unprofessional,” BBC News reported.
A BBC source said it would be wrong to say the corporation had failed to act because there were “interventions” in 2017 and 2018.
In a statement, the BBC 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.”
The corporation said it would be inappropriate to comment further due to the ongoing investigation by MasterChef’s production company, Banijay UK.
