Gregg Wallace belittled & terrified me when I was on MasterChef – but off camera something even weirder happened
AH, it’s always the ones you expect least…
That absolutely no-one seems surprised Gregg Wallace is a complete wrong’un says all you need to know about the man.
And that it has taken so many years for any discernible action to be taken against this dinosaur of the scullery – after all, this is the head-in-the-sand BBC – is similarly unsurprising.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that what Sir Rod Stewart said about his wife Penny’s time on the show was accurate, claiming he “humiliated” her.
In 2014, I filmed a journalists’ special of MasterChef: The Professionals.
I emerged deeply shaken, and utterly bemused.
Gregg was aggressive, mean and belittling – before sidling over, once the cameras had stopped rolling, and being charm personified.
To use a modern term, I felt like I’d been gaslit.
To be clear, the former greengrocer didn’t make any sexist ‘jokes’ nor, thankfully, did he maraud around with a sock around his penis whilst I chopped onions, all allegations he now faces.
And my experience on the show was no-where near as torrid as many of the accounts tumbling out of the woodwork now.
But his behaviour was weird enough to see people from the show check in with me after to make sure I was ok.
From the off, Gregg appeared to take a bizarre and instantaneous dislike to me.
I’d never before met him, and had never written a bad word about him. He was a man, frankly, not on my radar.
Yet within minutes, I was seemingly on his.
Grumpy, aggressive, sarcastic – he set his sights on me as the weakest link, and seemingly tried to intimidate and scare me. It worked.
Already terrified beneath the studio lights, sweat cascading off my heavily foundationed head, my hands were shaking as I pan-fried some garlic.
Our brief was to make a shepherd’s pie, and clad in the famous MasterChef whites, my cortisol was already spiked from the pressure of cooking, on camera, against a line-up that included an award-winning food writer and cookbook author (He won).
Like a dog with a bone, Gregg kept needling me with jabs with what went beyond “high japes”.
In my write-up of the experience, I detailed: “Whilst Michelin-starred chef Marcus Wareing looks friendly enough, his sidekick, Gregg Wallace, looks anything but.
“With his head gleaming under the lights, he catches my eye and, I swear, snarls.” I describe being “flustered”.
Granted, not aided by spending the next five minutes trying to turn on the induction hob, before the resident home economist eventually comes on set to do it for me.
Gregg told me I look “nervous” which is quite probably the least helpful thing to say to a nervous person.
Midway through filming, another contestant came up to me and asked what Gregg’s beef was.
“Why does he hate you?”, she asked.
To this day, I don’t know.
His co-host Marcus Wareing seemed to sense the hostility, and did all he could to make up for his partner’s lack of grace; he was kind, helpful and gentle throughout.
‘GASLIGHTING’
But once the cameras stopped rolling, something even weirder happened. Gregg was absolutely lovely.
“All right, Sausage! How was that?”, he ambled over and asked. “You did so well, Sausage!”
“Sausage”, I think, was meant as a term of endearment.
And when it came to the judging – cameras back rolling – he was similarly kind, praising my “perfectly cooked lamb” and saying I’d “surprised him”.
In today’s parlance, I believe his behaviour – weirdness, coldness, meanness followed by an outpouring of generosity and sweetness – is what Gen Z call “gaslighting”.
I felt gaslit.
Afterwards, a BBC staffer approached to check I was ok, whilst two of the other competitors insisted on taking me to the nearby pub to ply me with medicinal white wine to “take the edge off”.
“That was just so weird,” one told me after.
“I don’t know why he took such an instant dislike to you but everyone noticed it. We all felt so sorry for you – you looked utterly petrified.”
All in all, it was one of the strangest days of my working career.
But, let’s face it, as a journalist I have faced a lot, lot worse. This was water off a duck’s back and I bear no grudges.
To be honest, I brushed off Gregg’s pugnaciousness as part of his shtick; I just so happened to be that day’s foil.
Certainly I didn’t flag it to anyone in any official capacity, and no – I’m not going to pretend it caused any lasting damage. It didn’t.
PATTERN OF BEHAVIOUR
I can laugh about it now – and indeed, three wines down that evening, I found it all suitability ridiculous.
But clearly there is a pattern of behaviour here, beyond my “lived experience” (vomit), that cannot be brushed off merely as “banter”.
Some of the alleged comments and crudeness – which Gregg and his team of lawyers deny – are from a bygone era.
They don’t hold up to scrutiny in 2024.
Quite simply, you cannot be a stegosaurus in a fluffy bunny age.
Gregg must apologise if he hopes to revive his career. He may well believe he’s done nothing wrong – he is a man of his time – and that these complainants, including me, are a bunch of humourless snowflakes.
But whatever the truth, he must acknowledge how he made them feel crap.
If a veritable TV Rottweiler like Kirsty Wark – a brilliant, ball-busting, no nonsense woman who has seen it all before – says something isn’t ok, then it really isn’t.
Don’t take my word for it: take the word of the 20 women-plus before me.