The MasterChef host Gregg Wallace has said accusations about him making sexual comments towards staff and guests have come from “middle-class women of a certain age”.
Speaking in a video posted on his Instagram page, the 60-year-old said: “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.
“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.
“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 went on to claim that “absolutely none” of the staff on his other shows had complained about him.
He said: “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 historical misconduct are investigated.
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.
Channel 5 is also looking into allegations of inappropriate behaviour by the presenter while making the programme Gregg Wallace’s Big Weekends in 2019.
The Observer revealed this weekend that a letter detailing some of the allegations was sent to the BBC in 2022, including complaints of sexualised comments and of Wallace appearing topless in front of colleagues.
It was also reported that a BBC executive warned Wallace in 2017 that his behaviour was “unacceptable and cannot continue” after complaints made by the broadcaster Aasmah Mir, who appeared on the 12th series of Celebrity MasterChef.
Kate Phillips, who oversees unscripted programmes for the BBC, said she would ensure that she was “informed straight away” should further allegations be made against the MasterChef host, the Sunday Times reported.
Mir apparently wrote in an email forwarded to Phillips in November 2017: “Should anything happen in the future, I don’t want to feel guilty when people say ‘why wasn’t anything said before?’, or for producers or editors to claim they didn’t know.”
Wallace’s lawyers have denied that he engages in sexually harassing behaviour.
The celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall described Wallace’s decision to come out on the attack as “not wise”. Speaking on BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, he said: “I think it’s likely that Gregg has what we might call a bawdy sense of humour. Clearly that’s offended people.
“I think one of the issues is that down the years people have not felt able to tell him when he might want to rein it in a bit and clearly he’s crossed some lines.”
Fearnley-Whittingstall added: “I don’t think it’s smart to come out talking like that at the moment when he should probably be listening.”
BBC News reported last week that an internal investigation in 2018 looked into allegations of “sexual jokes” and other sexualised language that reportedly made colleagues “feel uncomfortable” and concluded that aspects of Wallace’s behaviour had been “unacceptable and unprofessional”.
The presenter Kirsty Wark has said Wallace, a former greengrocer, told stories and jokes of a “sexualised nature” when she was a Celebrity MasterChef contestant in 2011. The musician Rod Stewart claimed Wallace had “humiliated” his wife, Penny Lancaster, on the show in 2021.
In October, Wallace posted to his Instagram account a denial of claims that he’d talked about his sex life and taken his top off in front of a colleague, saying: “I didn’t say anything sexual.”
MasterChef’s production company, Banijay UK, has launched an investigation into the complaints and said Wallace was “committed to fully cooperating throughout the process”.
The company said last week “it is appropriate to conduct an immediate external review to fully and impartially investigate” and that anyone with issues or concerns could contact speakup@banijayuk.com in confidence.
