MasterChef host Wallace faces a number of allegations of making ‘inappropriate sexual jokes’
TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp has been sharing more details about an ’embarrassing’ encounter with MasterChef host Gregg Wallace.
The 53-year-old was filming a pilot for a TV quiz show alongside Wallace and his partner when the incident is said to have taken place, with Wallace allegedly making a comment about his sex life.
In an interview on Radio Five Live on Monday, Kirstie was asked about what had happened and how it had made her feel.
The Location, Location, Location presenter said her first thought had been for Wallace’s partner and whether she was aware of the comments he made.
She explained how it happened in the green room, once Wallace’s partner had left to sit in the audience and ‘he made a graphic reference to some of their bedroom activity’, adding that ‘it’s not something that would conceive a child’.
Wallace faces a number of allegations of making ‘inappropriate sexual jokes’, asking for the phone numbers of female members of production staff, and undressing in front of and standing ‘too close’ to women working on his shows.
Angered by a video the 60-year-old MasterChef presenter posted on Instagram, in which he claimed the complaints against him were coming from a ‘handful of middle-class women of a certain age’, Kirstie said: “My first thought was, oh how awful that he says those things about her just after she’s left the room, because you would never talk about what goes on with your wife in the bedroom with a colleague, you just wouldn’t, nor would my partner, nor would my brother, nor would my sons. It’s not a nice way to behave.
“So that was my thought, oh god, you know, I wonder if she knows he talks this way. I thought actually about her first of all, and I was embarrassed and I went quite red.”
Asked why she didn’t do more at the time, she said her ‘opinion of Gregg Wallace fell to the floor’, but she just got on with the job and wasn’t aware that it was a pattern of behaviour affecting other women.
She said: “If I’d known that he was doing this to younger team members, production staff and everything, I probably would have said something. But I don’t work on MasterChef. You can only comment on so many things in this world.”
It was announced Wallace is to step away from the BBC cooking show while historical misconduct complaints are externally reviewed by MasterChef producer Banijay UK. He also faces allegations of inappropriate sexual comments from 13 people across a range of shows over a 17-year period, as reported by BBC News, which said it sent a letter to the TV star’s representatives last week.
Wallace’s lawyers say ‘it is entirely false that he engages in behaviour of a sexually harassing nature’.
He has today apologised for ‘any offence that I caused’ after posting the video about the complaints coming from ‘a handful of middle-class women of a certain age’.