Former MasterChef host Gregg Wallace has discontinued his damages claim against the BBC after seeking £10,000 from the broadcaster.
The presenter, who was fired from the BBC show after a report upheld over 40 allegations of misconduct, claimed that the broadcaster had failed to comply with a request for copies of his personal data – causing him “distress and harassment”.
Wallace sued the BBC and its subsidiary BBC Studios Distribution Limited in October 2025 after being sacked from MasterChef. The presenter, 61, had hosted the show for 21 years before being dismissed over historic allegations of misconduct.
A BBC spokesperson told The Independent: “Shortly in advance of a hearing (due 16 February), Mr Wallace discontinued his claim. He is not receiving any payment in costs or damages from either BBC or BBC Studios.”
The Independent has contacted Gregg Wallace’s representative for comment.
In court documents, barrister Lawrence Power said that Wallace had requested “personal data” from the BBC and BBC Studios related to “his work, contractual relations and conduct”.
He claimed that Wallace had made subject access requests (SARs) to the companies on 6 March last year, but was told that parts of his personal data were being withheld due to “freedom of expression”.
Mr Power also alleged that the body had “wrongly redacted” information and “unlawfully failed to supply all of the complainant’s personal data”.
He added: “By reason of the defendants failing to fully comply with the SARs made by the claimant for his own personal data, the defendants acted in breach of their statutory duty and in doing so caused distress and harassment to the claimant.”
The BBC rejected Wallace’s claim at the time, stating that he was not “entitled to any damages”. Filing its defence to the High Court in October, the broadcaster denied that Wallace had “suffered any distress or harassment” as a result of its responses to his requests and claimed that he pursued the lawsuit without giving any prior notice.
In July last year, a report into Wallace’s behaviour on MasterChef upheld 45 out of 83 allegations of misconduct – including one of unwelcome physical contact.
According to the report, which was conducted by production company Banijay with law firm Lewis Silkin, a “smaller number of allegations of other inappropriate language and being in a state of undress” were also upheld.
At the time, the BBC apologised to “everyone who has been impacted by Mr Wallace’s behaviour”, admitting: “We accept more could and should have been done sooner.”
Shortly before the report’s release, Wallace took to Instagram to announce that he had been axed from MasterChef and to “apologise without reservation” for the language he was “primarily guilty of” using. He added: “I recognise that some of my humour and language, at times, was inappropriate.”
However, he claimed that the findings “exonerated [him] of all the serious allegations which made headlines last year”.
Since his exit, Wallace has stepped away from the spotlight and instead focused on making Cameo videos for fans. The host said earlier this month that he was “the most requested” celebrity on the personalised video site for Valentine’s Day.
“Love sending the messages. Some very romantic, some very funny,” he wrote on Tuesday (17 February).
Wallace wasn’t the only long-standing MasterChef host to leave in disgrace – John Torode was dropped from the show after the investigation into Wallace found his co-host had used an “extremely offensive racist term”.
Torode, who began hosting MasterChef in 2005, said that he had “no recollection of the incident” and was “shocked and saddened” by the allegation in an Instagram post last July.
He denied the allegation of using the racist term, which was investigated and substantiated by Lewis Silkin in their report, and said that he knows any racial language “is wholly unacceptable in any environment”.
Torode continues to appear on This Morning during the cooking segments and still hosts John and Lisa’s Weekend Kitchen on ITV with his wife, Lisa Faulkner.
MasterChef is now hosted by food critic Grace Dent and chef Anna Haugh, while Saturday Kitchen’s Matt Tebbutt took over Wallace’s presenting duties on MasterChef: The Professionals.
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