Famous men should not take advantage of their status to engage in sexually inappropriate behaviour, or make explicit remarks, at work. If and when this happens, their bosses should ensure that it is stopped. This might seem obvious. But in an interview for BBC News last week, Kirsty Wark, the former Newsnight host, described how when she was a contestant on Celebrity MasterChef in 2011, she complained to the production company about the show’s co-presenter Gregg Wallace. She thought a sexualised monologue he delivered early one morning on set was so ill-judged that it made her angry, and worried that staff on short-term contracts would not feel able to object.
BBC News also heard from 12 other people making various allegations. That it has taken so many years for these claims to emerge strongly suggests that the impunity enjoyed by celebrities is an ongoing cultural problem in the media industry. Mr Wallace has apologised for a video made at the weekend, in which he suggested the complaints against him came from “a handful of middle-class women of a certain age”. He is cooperating with an investigation by MasterChef’s production company, Banijay UK.
