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.
