Popular BBC presenter Gregg Wallace has announced he will be stepping back from one of his shows. The Masterchef host confirmed he will quit as presenter of Inside The Factory to focus on his son, 3, who has autism.
The 58 year old has been part of the show for seven years but he has already filmed a number of episodes, where the team looks at how goods are made, that are yet to be aired. Despite the news, he also added that he will remain part of Masterchef.
Wallace was speaking on Gaby Roslin's BBC Radio London show. He described his son as a lovely, lovely little boy with a 'wonderful mother' but added that it's 'not easy', The Mirror reports.
He said a key factor in leaving the show was due to the amount of travel involved away from his family so he could visit different factories. He added: "So I’ve made a decision that I’m actually not going to do Inside The Factory any more.
"It’s a good time to stop doing it because there’s actually 12 episodes in the can… so I wouldn’t have been filming for a while anyway so it just seemed like a good idea to stop it."
Gregg, who started as the original presenter of the BBC's long-running cooking show Saturday Kitchen, has also featured on popular shows such as Eat Well For Less, Turn Back Time, Harvest and Supermarket Secrets.
He shares son Sid with Anne-Marie Sterpini, who he married in 2016.
Off-screen, Gregg is also running a health site called ShowMe.Fit while also focusing on his family.
The Celebrity MasterChef judge added: "Imagine a child that you can’t threaten or bribe and that’s basically what you’ve got.
"You’ve got a little boy who’s cuddly and happy and naughty, like any little boy would be, but he can’t speak, he can’t talk to you, so he gets frustrated because he finds it difficult to tell you what exactly it is he needs.
"Right now, we need to find education for him and I can’t just leave that to Anna – that’s a big, big decision.
"I mean, all parents worry about the schools that children will go to. Ours is even more highlighted because of poor little Sid’s issues."
The BBC confirmed a new presenter for the show will be announced in due course.
The corporation’s head of specialist factual, Jack Bootle, praised Gregg for his help in the show succeeding and said he had helped bring “humour, intelligence and genuine curiosity to one of the BBC’s biggest returning factual brands".
He added: "I’d like to thank him for all his hard work and commitment to the programme."
A new series of Inside The Factory presented by Wallace, Cherry Healey and Ruth Goodman will launch on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer in April.
