The Gregg Wallace scandal now snowballs onwards and ever downwards, an unedifying avalanche of accusation, counter accusation, gloat and smut.
What a very British pile-on it has become, with elements of class thrown into the mix, along with accusations of wokeism and beefy whines from the its-only-banter brigade, carolling support for their misunderstood bloke’s bloke who was only being blokey, where’s your sense of humour, luv? Must be that time of the month again, amiright?
The BBC has now cancelled the Christmas MasterChef shows and everyone is having their say about the disgraced host, including Rod Stewart (‘he is a bully’); Prime Minister Keir Starmer (‘he is misogynistic and inappropriate’); and chef Tom Kerridge (‘he’s fun and full of jokes’).
But what about the lovely ladies, as Gregg himself might say?
Well. Sound the muffled bells for the weeping wounded. Let’s hear it for the MasterChef contestants who cried when he commented on the size of their puddings, the production assistants who needed counselling after he told more of his smutty jokes.
And shall we salute the negative energy he exuded, which was apparently so toxic it made Melanie Sykes give up on her television career for ever – she claims – proving even public shame can have an upside.
Kirsty Wark recalled inappropriate sexual comments Wallace made back in 2011 when she appeared on a celebrity version of MasterChef. Writer Emma Kennedy huffed and puffed onto the radio this week to reveal she ‘may have seen’ Wallace pretend to fondle the bottom of a photographer’s assistant and cry, ‘Cor!’ in 2012. Kirstie Allsopp declared that one thought Wallace was a bit off, but one doesn’t like cancel culture so here’s a lovely Christmas bauble one made earlier and let’s all move on, shall one? But we can’t move on, Kirstie. We simply cannot.
For despite years of rumours about his fruity behaviour, Wallace was forced to step back from the cooking show only last week. This followed BBC News sending a letter to his representatives setting out allegations of inappropriate sexual comments made by 13 people – including Wark – who collaborated with him across a range of shows over a 17-year period.
Allegations against him were hardly in the Jimmy Savile-Huw Edwards-Stuart Hall axis of celebrity sex offences.
Gregg Wallace was forced to step back from MasterChef only last week after years of rumours about his fruity behaviour
There appeared to be a lot of schoolboy smut, a bit of dancing around with only a sock covering his modesty, a flash of pubic hair in a dressing room and enough double-entendres to make Viz’s comic strip character Finbarr Saunders blow his stack, fnarr, fnarr.
Yes, there was also a relentless, unnerving interest in the sex lives of young women unfortunate enough to stray into his orbit, but Wallace’s lawyers say he denies any allegations of sexually harassing behaviour.
Initially I was minded to give the 60-year-old, four-times-married father of three the benefit of the doubt. Surely the old fool was just annoying but harmless, like Bridget Jones’s pervy Uncle Geoffrey (‘How’s your sex life, Bridget?’). But then something happened that changed everything.
On Wednesday, a woman named Shannon Kyle was interviewed on BBC2’s Newsnight. She revealed to host Victoria Derbyshire that she was Gregg Wallace’s ghostwriter, hired to write his best-selling 2012 autobiography, Life On A Plate. At the time Miss Kyle was a 35-year-old single mother, in need of the money and the gig.
On Newsnight she was clearly embarrassed when detailing the graphic nature of what she alleges Wallace said and did to her, but she struggled through with dignity, passing on the shame just like Madame Pelicot in her terrible rape trial currently going through the French courts. While her ordeal pales against Madame Pelicot’s, Shannon was also principled and motivated into the spotlight for the right reasons.
Wallace’s lawyers have denied any sexual misconduct took place but I found her version of events compelling.
She said Wallace groped her, touched her bottom and once engineered to appear naked in front of her. At their first lunch, he asked to have sex with her, then said: ‘If you won’t let me sleep with you, would you lick my a******* instead?’ Over dessert, he said: ‘What would you think if I put some of the Eton Mess you’re eating on my willy, then?’
I apologise for the crudeness of these words, but believe it is important for everyone to understand what kind of a man we are dealing with here. For this is not the kind of cheeky-chappy banter that could be misconstrued by uptight ‘middle-class women of a certain age’ – to quote Wallace.
Instead, if Shannon’s allegations are true, it is a form of predatory, sexual aggression, designed to embarrass and discomfit. Still, you have to wonder why – despite centuries of feminism – Gregg Wallace survived and thrived like a fungus for so long in the showbiz world. Safe in his television fiefdom, secure in his celebrity, according to many women who have worked with him, Wallace has been persistently appalling towards female colleagues and she-stars for nearly two decades.
Yet in that time not one woman stood up and told him to shut the hell up. Or slapped him. Or walked out, refused to work with him, or called the cops. Not even the frankly terrifying Kirsty Wark.
Is it that everyone was complicit in some kind of showbiz omerta, where the talent get to behave like monsters simply because they are so valuable and powerful? Certainly, there are questions to be asked about John Torode’s largely silent role in this debacle. Was he an unwitting enabler, too?
It is easier, perhaps, to understand why Shannon Kyle didn’t walk out of her lunch with Wallace the second he brought his genitals into the conversation.
That is the big perv-power he had all along, this belittling, blokeish supremacy that led him to believe he was indestructible.
More fool him. Before Shannon Kyle’s interview, Gregg Wallace might just have survived the scandal. I hope she takes comfort in the fact that she helped banish this sexed-up octopus, handsy and slimy in equal measure, from our screens for ever.
JUST DESSERTS: ‘I’VE always been able to talk to people, always been persuasive, always liked a laugh. It is something that is natural to me.’ Gregg Wallace in his 2012 autobiography, Life On A Plate.
Was this David’s big knight out?
There are moments when even my hard heart melts – and seeing Posh and Becks at Buckingham Palace this week was one of them. Just look at these crazy kids!
David and Victoria Beckham attended their first state banquet, joining King Charles, Queen Camilla and the Prince of Wales for the glittering evening for the Emir of Qatar and his wife.
David bristled with pride and hair gel, giving his wife a reassuring hand when she appeared nervous walking through the East Gallery.
I say nervous – Posh dithered about like a pigeon at the wrong bus stop. And I’m not sure about that sombre choice of dress for such a grand royal occasion.
‘One only wears black at Buckingham Palace if one is a gentleman or one is attending a funeral,’ sniffed an aide.
Still, look how thrilled they both are – it’s completely charming. Does this appearance mean the former England captain will finally be knighted in the New Year’s Honours List? Arise Sir David and Lady Posh? You know, I think it’s going to happen.
Why Anna, 75, is still in vogue
Dame Anna Wintour was in London this week, opening a Vogue exhibition, wearing impeccable outfits, brushing off questions about being the inspiration for Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada (‘I don’t really think about it’) and explaining why she always wears dark glasses, even indoors.
‘They help me see and they help me not see. They help me be seen and not be seen. They are a prop, I would say,’ the enigmatic Vogue supremo told the BBC.
It’s actually really clever if you think about it. Without her trademark sunglasses, Wintour could travel around any city in the world, completely incognito. With them on, she is instantly recognisable. Such a brilliant disguise, as Bruce Springsteen once almost noted.
I admire Anna’s smarts, her work ethic, attention to detail and the fact that not only did she get to the top of the fashion tree, but also stayed there for four decades.
She is now at an age – 75 – when people ask if she plans to retire or keep going into her ninth decade. And the lady is not for turning – or leaving Vogue any time soon.
‘I think only of today, not tomorrow,’ she said.
Ditch the daft degrees, kids
The Social Mobility Commission has said that a university degree is not a ‘silver bullet’ to success – as if that were somehow news.
The independent government agency says more young people should be encouraged to start businesses and get apprenticeships, which are often much more reliable routes to a better life.
Too right. It also gets them out into the world, solving real problems and dealing with tricky situations. It gets them on with the business of living, as opposed to being cloistered in academe for years studying something useless like Stand Up Comedy (University of Kent) or Surf Science (Plymouth University).
Could someone have a word with Sir Cliff Richard about his gravy recipe? The 84-year-old crooner makes his Christmas turkey gravy with eight stock cubes – a mix of lamb, chicken, beef and vegetable.
The madman mixes this savoury rubble with chopped fried onions, then adds teriyaki, soy and Worcestershire sauces, as well as a sprinkling of gravy powder. ‘It is the best gravy in the world,’ says Cliff of his combustible elixir.
Chefs are horrified – one even claimed it was ‘absolutely vile’. It certainly sounds like something Elon Musk should pump into the engines of his Starship rocket, not something that should be poured anywhere near your precious sprouts.