Ah, it’s always the ones you least expect…
It seems that absolutely no one is surprised that Gregg Wallace is the total culprit, which tells you everything you need to know about the man.
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Clemmie Moodie takes part in MasterChef with Gregg Wallace Credit: Phil Harris
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Pictured with Gregg Wallace and Marcus Wareing cooking his signature shepherd’s pie Credit: Phil Harris
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Clemmie recounted her encounter with Wallace on the show in 2014. Credit: Phil Harris
And that it’s taken so many years for any more noticeable action to be taken against this laundry room dinosaur – this is the BBC’s Stuck in the Sand, after all – is hardly surprising either.
There is absolutely no doubt that what Sir Rod Stewart said about his wife Penny’s time on the show was true, claiming he “humiliated” her.
In 2014, I recorded the press special MasterChef: The Professionals. I came out deeply shaken and extremely confused.
Gregg was aggressive, mean and dismissive – before he walked away, after the cameras stopped rolling, and he was charm personified.
Read more about Gregg Wallace
To use a modern term, I felt like I had been shot with gas.
To be clear, the former greengrocer didn’t make any sexist ‘jokes’ or, thankfully, run around with a sock around his penis while I chopped onions, all the charges he now faces.
And my experience on the show was nowhere near as tumultuous as many of the accounts that are now failing.
But his behavior was weird enough that I saw people from the show check in with me afterwards to make sure I was okay.
At first it seemed that I didn’t like Gregg at all.
I have never met him before, nor have I written a bad word about him. He was a man, honestly, he wasn’t 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 frighten me. It worked.
Gregg Wallace ‘forced to apologize for rape joke’ years before leaving MasterChef over ‘sexual comments to staff’
Already terrified under the studio lights, sweat dripping from my foundation-pounded head, my hands shaking as I roasted some garlic.
Our task was to make shepherd’s pie, and dressed in the famous MasterChef whites, my cortisol was already soaring from the pressure of cooking, on camera, against a lineup that included an award-winning food writer and cookbook author (He Won ).
Like a dog with a bone, Gregg continued to poke me with jabs that went beyond “yaks”.
In my write-up of the experience, I detailed: “While Michelin-starred chef Marcus Wareing seems friendly enough, his assistant, Gregg Wallace, seems anything but.
“With his head glistening in the lights, he caught my eye and, I swear, growled.” I describe being “disturbed”.
Admittedly, without the help of spending the next five minutes trying to turn on the induction hob, before the home economist finally comes on set to do it for me.
Gregg told me I looked “nervous,” which is probably the least helpful thing to say to a nervous person.
In the middle of filming, another contestant came up to me and asked what Gregg’s beef was.
“Why does he hate you?”, she asked.
Even today 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.
‘GASLING’
But when the cameras stopped rolling, something even stranger happened. Gregg was absolutely wonderful.
“Okay, sausages! How was that?”, he walked up and asked. “You did so well, Sausage!”
“Sausage”, I think, was intended as a term of endearment.
And when it came to judging – the cameras were rolling – he was just as gracious, complimenting my “perfectly cooked lamb” and saying I had “surprised” him.
In today’s parlance, I believe his behavior – weirdness, coldness, meanness accompanied by an outpouring of generosity and sweetness – is what Gen Z calls “gaslighting”.
I felt gassed.
Afterwards, a BBC staffer came over to check I was okay, while two other contestants insisted on taking me to a nearby pub to drink medicated white wine to “take the edge off”.
“That was so weird,” one told me afterward.
“I don’t know why you turned away from him like that right now, but everyone noticed it. We all felt very sorry for you – you looked completely petrified.”
All in all, it was one of the strangest days of my working career.
But let’s face it, I’ve faced much, much worse things as a journalist. This was water off a duck’s back and I don’t hold a grudge.
To be honest, I dismissed Gregg’s aggressiveness as part of his bullshit; I happened to be there that day.
I certainly didn’t point it out to anyone in any official capacity, and no – I won’t pretend it caused any lasting damage. It’s not.
PATTERN OF BEHAVIOR
I can laugh about it now – and indeed, after three wines that evening, I found all the appropriateness laughable.
But there’s clearly a pattern of behavior here, outside of my “lived experience” (vomiting), that can’t just be dismissed as “banter”.
Some of the alleged comments and rudeness – which Gregg and his team of lawyers deny – date back to the past.
They do not stand up to scrutiny in 2024.
Quite simply, you can’t be a stegosaurus in the age of fluffy bunnies.
Gregg must apologize if he hopes to revive his career. He might believe that he has done nothing wrong – he is a man of his time – and that these accusers, myself included, are a bunch of humorless fluff.
But whatever the truth is, he has to admit that he made them feel like crap because of him.
If a real TV Rottweiler like Kirsty Wark – a brilliant, no-nonsense, ball-busting woman who’s seen it all before – says something’s wrong, then it really isn’t.
Don’t take my word for it: Take the word of 20 plus women before me.
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Gregg quits BBC hit amid investigation into ‘inappropriate sexual comments’Credit: Rex
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Gregg was a host for several years on Credit: Paul Edwards
Categories: Optical Illusion
Source: HIS Education