Gregg Wallace must have thought he’d landed on a winner when he took to Instagram to defend himself over the weekend. Several complaints about inappropriate behaviour on the set of MasterChef had emerged, ranging from rape jokes to bullying, and Wallace spotted a theme. He dismissed his accusers as “middle class women of a certain age” who had appeared on Celebrity MasterChef. “This isn’t right,” he told his followers, shaking his head.
Perhaps Wallace felt he could ride the zeitgeist. Middle-aged women are often the brunt of jokes online, characterised as stick up the arse Karens or out of touch TERFs, and Wallace implied he was the victim of a conspiracy concocted by a group of said Karens against a working class man. He’s a lad’s lad, and it’s not his fault if perimenopausal women can’t take a joke.
whichever PR firm advised Gregg Wallace to take on “middle class women of a certain age” clearly hate him as well
— dave ❄️ 🥕 🧻 (@mrdavemacleod) December 1, 2024
pic.twitter.com/1lWuEjq6QY
But the plan has backfired spectacularly, with a load of high profile men hitting out at the presenter. As author David Baddiel put it, “It's not often that the internet gets behind middle-class middle-aged women these days, but thanks to Gregg Wallace for making it happen.” Downing Street described the comment as “inappropriate and misogynistic”, while Stephen Fry called Wallace “foolish” and ill-mannered.
Wallace has taken to Instagram to mount yet another watertight defence: screenshots of private messages from people who say he was always nice to them. One from former MasterChef contestant Chris Finnigan is particularly revealing: “If anyone’s taking offence to your banter they need to have a word with themselves. You shouldn’t have to apologise for jokes. Because they’re supposed to be funny,” he says.
It's not often that the internet gets behind middle-class middle-aged women these days, but thanks to Gregg Wallace for making it happen.
— David Baddiel (@Baddiel) December 1, 2024
In 2017, I took part in Celebrity Masterchef. I put my first dish down in front of the judges and the cameras paused to reset. In front of everyone, Gregg Wallace told me to tell a colleague at the BBC “that she was a sexy bitch.” No-one said anything. And yes, I did complain. pic.twitter.com/YE626mmezB
— Aasmah Mir (@AasmahMir) November 30, 2024
Herein lies the essential problem: “it was supposed to be funny” no longer flies as an excuse. The days of lad jokes that toe the line of sexual indecency are vanishing. And some of the behaviour Wallace is accused of is hardly side splitting, from undressing on set to describing a BBC staff member as a “sexy bitch”. In a statement to BBC News, Wallace’s legal team said "it is entirely false that he engages in behaviour of a sexually harassing nature."
Several of the complaints allege that Wallace often asked women about their sex lives and went into sordid detail describing his own. “Within 1hr of meeting Gregg Wallace he told me of a sex act that he & his partner at the time enjoyed “every morning”,” wrote presenter Kirstie Allsopp on X. LBC’s Vanessa Feltz had a similar story of Wallace describing “a sex act that he had performed on his then wife that morning" to a lift full of strangers.
Even Piers Morgan thinks Wallace’s behaviour sounds passé. “He’s obviously behaved like a bit of a knob for a very long time in the workplace and a lot of women didn’t like it,” Morgan told me at an awards ceremony recently. “It’s like mate, you’ve got to move with the times a bit. The old Millwall banter isn’t playing quite like it used to.”
Few in the public spotlight have come to Wallace’s defence, though his mate William Sitwell wrote in The Telegraph that he found the allegations “startling to say the least” and described Wallace as “interesting, funny, exhausting and outrageous”.
Sitwell reckons it is “unlikely” that allegations on the level of those against someone like Huw Edwards will emerge. He’s probably right, and some defenders of Wallace have said there are bigger fish to fry. It’s a classic straw man argument. There are always bigger fish, but that doesn’t mean women should have to sit through men showing off about their sexual peccadilloes in the workplace. Or that they should be branded as bores for not finding, say, a rape joke funny.
Wallace has now apologised for his “middle class women of a certain age” comment and said he is going to “take some time out” while the investigation is underway. But the debacle has shown that dismissing women as bores or prudes in the face of “boys will be boys” locker room chat is a tough act to pull off nowadays – and rightly so.
