As the Guardian’s restaurant critic she has spent an “excessive amount of time in posh restaurants, eating fancy, ornate tasting menus”, but Grace Dent’s new challenge will see her tasting the delights of minor stars in front of rolling cameras as the new judge of Celebrity MasterChef.
Dent, who also hosts the Guardian’s Comfort Eating podcast, will replace Gregg Wallace alongside John Torode, the BBC confirmed on Wednesday. Wallace stepped down from the series at the end of November while its production company, Banijay UK, investigates claims of misconduct, which he denies.
Dent, who has appeared regularly as a guest on MasterChef, will judge the 20th series of the show, and said the step up to main judge was a dream come true.
“I’m so excited that I can’t eat, which is severely detrimental to a restaurant critic. I feel very lucky to be stepping in for the next Celebrity MasterChef,” she said. “I can’t wait to meet the fresh celebrity faces for 2025.”
Dent, who published Comfort Eating: What We Eat When Nobody’s Looking last year after the publication of her memoir, Hungry, in 2020, added that she had been watching the show since she was a girl, sitting on a sofa with her dad. “My whole family watches it. It’s all about uncovering and championing talent – and to have ended up in this position is more than a dream to me,” she said.
The news comes after a tumultuous period for one of the BBC’s flagship shows. The BBC pulled two MasterChef celebrity Christmas specials, a Celebrity MasterChef Christmas Cook Off and a Strictly Festive Extravaganza from its schedule, but the recent series of MasterChef: The Professionals continued to air amid a storm of allegations against Wallace.
Last week the model and Loose Women presenter Penny Lancaster, a former contestant on the show, said she witnessed and was a victim of bullying and harassment by Wallace, who has denied claims of misconduct. It came after the presenter Kirsty Wark, a Celebrity MasterChef contestant in 2011, alleged that Wallace told “sexualised” jokes during filming. Lawyers for the 60-year-old have said it is untrue that “he engages in behaviour of a sexually harassing nature”.
Wallace was also accused of sending inappropriate texts to a young female reporter, while a woman said the presenter had asked a British Sign Language interpreter to sign “big boobs” and “sexy bum” in front of a live audience at the BBC Good Food show. Shannon Kyle, the ghostwriter of his 2012 autobiography, claimed he sexually harassed her when she was working on the book. Lawyers representing Wallace said: “Our client has denied that he has engaged in any such behaviour, and he specifically denies any sexual misconduct with Ms Kyle.”
After revelations that the BBC had received multiple complaints about him, Wallace dismissed his accusers as “middle-class women of a certain age”. He later apologised, and said he was not “in a good head space” when he made the comments, adding: “I’ve been under a huge amount of stress, a lot of emotion, I felt very alone and under siege yesterday when I posted it.”
John Torode, who has presented MasterChef alongside Wallace since 2005, has said he found the allegations of harassment against his former co-host “truly upsetting”. In a statement released to mark Dent’s new tenure on Celebrity MasterChef, he did not mention the furore around Wallace, but said that the food critic was “the perfect person to step in alongside me as judge for the forthcoming Celebrity MasterChef series”.
“I have loved working with Grace on MasterChef over the years. She has been an excellent guest, an inspiring critic and also set some incredible challenges,” he said. “Expertise is what MasterChef is all about, from the contestants to our wonderful production team, to us as judges.”
Kalpna Patel-Knight, the BBC’s head of entertainment, said: “Grace is not only an energetic and well established member of the MasterChef team, but is also a world-renowned food critic, so she will certainly keep the next batch of celebrities on their toes.”
