MasterChef star Gregg Wallace is under fire after he was accused of ‘inappropriate behaviour’ by a number of women, including Celebrity MasterChef contestants and a ghostwriter.
The star, 60, has stepped down from the show after denied allegations of inappropriate sexual comments, with his lawyers strongly denying Gregg engages in behaviour of a sexually harassing nature. Gregg insisted via his legal team: “It is entirely false that he engages in behaviour of a sexually harassing nature.”
On Wednesday, Gregg’s ghostwriter, Shannon Kyle, made accusations against the star when speaking to Victoria Derbyshire on NewsNight.
Kirsty talked about how he told “sexualised” jokes during filming (
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BBC)
Elsewhere, Celebrity MasterChef winner Emma Kennedy then claimed that Gregg touched an assistant on the bum, sparking an instant reaction. Meanwhile, TV star Ulrika Jonsson, has claimed another female contestant heard Wallace make a ‘rape joke’ on MasterChef.
Meanwhile, Lisa, not her real name, worked on the BBC show Eat Well For Less in 2015 and told BBC News that Gregg “touched [her] inappropriately” when they were filming in a supermarket.
She claimed: “He brushed past me at the checkout, and touched my bum with his waist and penis and laughed and said ‘oooh you liked that didn’t you’”. Lisa said she felt like she had to “get on” with work after the alleged incident. She added: “When I finished the shoot, I felt it was slimy, disgusting. He just didn’t need to touch my body, it made me uncomfortable.”
Then, on Tuesday, Gregg was accused of asking a British Sign Language interpreter to sign inappropriate phrases. An attendee at the BBC Good Food Show claimed Wallace asked the interpreter to sign “big boobs” and “sexy bum” at the NEC Arena in Birmingham in 2012.
“There was a British Sign Language interpreter there and he wandered over to her at one point and just said: ‘Do you have to sign everything I say?’ And she said yes, and then he just started saying, ‘big boobs’, ‘sexy bum’ – this sort of thing, in order to get her to sign it. It was like he could control her, I suppose,” the attendee claimed to the Guardian.
It comes as the presenter is “committed to fully cooperating throughout the process” during the BBC’s investigation process, a statement from the show’s production company Banijay UK said. He has also stepped away from his role on the show amid the investigation. On Sunday morning, Gregg took to social media to challenge the accusations and claimed they came from “middle-class women of a certain age” prompting Ulrika to say his “ignorance and arrogance knows no bounds”.
So, as fans of the show are left reeling that two of the Christmas editions of Celebrity MasterChef have been pulled following the furore, here’s all the accusations made against Gregg on the culinary show…
Shannon Kyle
Lawyers representing Wallace told the BBC: “Our client has denied that he has engaged in any such behaviour, and he specifically denies any sexual misconduct with Ms Kyle.”
Kyle went on to claim the TV star shared explicit details about his sex life while she was working on the memoir between May and August 2012. She claimed he touched her thigh when she was in the passenger seat of his sports car and felt her bum after he showed up at the Good Food Show.
She chose to speak out about what allegedly happened to her to share his “predatory” behaviour. His lawyers strongly denied he engages in behaviours of a sexually harassing nature. The ghostwriter said her first interview with him was ‘pretty straightforward’ but by the second or third interview, he began ‘discussing his love life’.
Kyle claimed he talked about the women he dated and the ‘sexual acts they had done together’. “He talked about spanking a lot. He also talked about one of his girlfriends on all fours in front of a mirror,” she claimed, saying he spoke in “incredibly sexual detail”. Kyle said it was “shocking” as it had nothing to do with the book.
Speaking to Newsnight, Kyle said she once had a meeting arranged at his home and he allegedly opened the door “completely naked, except for a towel around his waist” after he got back from the gym and just had a shower. She said she would come back later but he allegedly said “don’t mind me” before she asked Wallace to get dressed.
Kyle went on to claim she was waiting on the couch for him and he returned in the towel and ‘dropped the towel’, which she claimed wasn’t an accident, after he said his trousers were folded behind the cushion she was “sat on”. She wondered whether he “planted those”. She asked him to get dressed and he then went to put on some clothes.
On Wednesday, Gregg’s ghostwriter, Shannon Kyle, made accusations against the star when speaking to Victoria Derbyshire on NewsNight (
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BBC)
“I felt quite vulnerable because I’m on my own in a flat with a man. He’s naked,” she said. Kyle said she ‘pushed on through’ as she signed an NDA and was scared of losing her job.
According to Kyle, the NDA allegedly stated the “writer understands that Wallace enjoys a high public profile and her obligations to him of loyalty and confidentiality are therefore of particular significance”.
The entire alleged incident was “really revolting” and she claimed the incident might have “been planned”. Kyle went on to describe more alleged incidents, which she wrote down in an email to a friend. She said the moments made her “toes curl” and she wanted to “pass that shame back” to the person who said them.
The writer said that, during another meeting for the memoir, the MasterChef star said sexually inappropriate things to her, including: “If you won’t let me sleep with you, would you lick my [a***hole]?”
During the meeting, which was held at a restaurant, he allegedly told her as she was eating dessert: “What would you think if I put some of the Eton Mess you’re eating on my willy, then?” She said it was “sickening” and “obscene”.
Kirsty Wark
Among those who have made complaints is Kirsty Wark, who was a Celebrity MasterChef contestant in 2011. She talked about how he told “sexualised” jokes during filming.
Broadcaster Kirsty, best known for hosting BBC NewsNight, claimed earlier this week that Wallace told “jokes of a sexualised nature” on two occasions during filming. She added that crew and other contestants were present. Speaking to BBC News, Kirsty said Wallace’s alleged remarks were “really, really in the wrong place”.
Kirsty finished second on that year’s Celebrity MasterChef and later said she was considering opening her own restaurant. Asked in a BBC radio interview in 2012 if she fancied opening a restaurant or café, she said: “I have registered a domain name of Kirsty’s Kitchen. I don’t know exactly what I will do with it yet. It would be fun.”
Penny Lancaster
Sir Rod Stewart took to his Instagram page to hit out at Wallace and called him a ‘tubby, bald-headed, ill-mannered bully’ (
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BBC)
After the accusations emerged, Sir Rod Stewart took to his Instagram page to hit out at Wallace and called him a “tubby, bald-headed, ill-mannered bully.” He wrote: “So Greg Wallace gets fired from Masterchef. Good riddance Wallace…You humiliated my wife when she was on the show but you had that bit cut out didn’t you? You’re a tubby, bald-headed, ill-mannered bully. Karma got ya. Sir Rod Stewart.”
Model Penny took part in the celebrity version of the BBC cooking show in 2021, but only managed to make it to the quarter finals. Though she had impressed Wallace and fellow host John Torode with some of her dishes, her butternut squash ravioli went 10 minutes over time.
Viewers saw Wallace tell Penny: “Mate, we can’t be 10 minutes late,” as he called her delay in delivering the dish “serious”. But Penny was having none of it as she hit back: “Well, we’re going to have to be, otherwise I won’t have a dish.” Afterwards she admitted: “Everything piled on top of me. I just hope the wait was worth it.”
A spokesperson for Penny recently revealed that she is prepared to go to the authorities. Speaking to MailOnline, they said: “While Penny is happy to talk to the appropriate authorities should they feel she has anything useful to add, she will not be discussing the matter with any broadcaster or newspaper at this time.”
Ulrika Jonsson
Ulrika claimed that Wallace made a ‘rape joke’ on MasterChef (
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Ulrika Jonsson also made a claim about Wallace on her Instagram Stories. The TV presenter and model, 57, claimed another female contestant heard Wallace make a ‘rape joke’ on MasterChef. The Swedish-British star, who took part in the show in 2017, claimed that she felt like she was being ‘made a liar of’ after Gregg’s lawyers insisted that all the claims were ‘entirely false’.
In another Instagram story, she claimed that several members of the crew on MasterChef knew what was going on and had allegedly seen Gregg’s inappropriate behaviour. She claimed: “Plenty of crew on set who would not dare to speak up for fear of losing their jobs.”
Speaking to the Telegraph, Jonsson claimed that another female contestant had become “really distressed” after Wallace’s alleged remarks. The star claimed that she saw the woman walking off set and asked her what had happened before Jonsson was told about the alleged ‘rape joke’. “She then told us that Gregg Wallace had made a rape joke. She was really distressed about it.”
The contestant then retold the joke to Jonsson, before deciding to speak to a producer about the incident. “They then went off to speak to Gregg,” she said. “After a while he came up…and he apologised. He could hardly get his words out… He was apologising, and he had tears in his eyes.”
Ulrika has since hit out at Gregg branding him “ignorant and arrogant” after his video claiming that the allegations had been made by “middle-class women of a certain age.” Speaking to The Sun, she said: “I am nothing short of seething. Somewhere in his misogynistic, thoughtless, ancient mind he felt it appropriate to tell the world this. Oh, Gregg. Your ignorance and arrogance knows no bounds. Firstly, you have no clue what ‘class’ of women it is that have made complaints about you. What we can ascertain is that they are a shed-load classier than you will ever be.”
Charlotte Crosby
Charlotte said he was ‘unpleasant’ to her while she was on the show (
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Geordie Shore star Charlotte Crosby, who appeared on the latest Celebrity MasterChef, told her followers: “He was extremely unpleasant to me when I was on MasterChef.” The TV star didn’t expand on her claim but previously spoke of her time on MasterChef while on the One Show. She said: “There’s something about that space and that studio you feel like a little kid again. It’s horrible, all the lights are on you. The pressure – it’s really scary. There was a lot of emotion!”
Emma Kennedy
Celebrity MasterChef winner Emma Kennedy has opened up on her own experience (
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BBC)
2012 Celebrity MasterChef winner Emma Kennedy claims she flagged that she believed she saw Gregg touch a photographer assistant’s bottom. She said: “I told an assistant producer, I told a producer, and I told the head of PR at MasterChef. I got the sense that this was something that they were well used to, if I’m being honest, and that it was just a sort of ‘roll your eyes’, and well, ‘this is Gregg being Gregg’.”
Wallace’s lawyers have said “it is entirely false that he engages in behaviour of a sexually harassing nature.” The BBC also released a statement saying: “We take any issues that are raised with us seriously and we have robust processes in place to deal with them. We are always clear that any behaviour which falls below the standards expected by the BBC will not be tolerated.
“Where an individual is contracted directly by an external production company we share any complaints or concerns with that company and we will always support them when addressing them. It would be inappropriate for us to comment on anything that could form part of Banijay’s ongoing investigation or otherwise influence it.”
Mel Sykes
Former Celebrity MasterChef contestant, Melanie Sykes, also complained about Gregg (
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Former Celebrity MasterChef contestant, Melanie Sykes, complained about judge, Gregg Wallace, after working with him on the BBC show in 2021.
Claiming the dad-of-three “barked orders at how we had to behave” and was “very unprofessional”, the former model said Gregg made her “quit TV”. Writing in her autobiography, she said: “When I was finally out [of MasterChef], I wanted to run out of there, I could not wait to leave, but I did try to find John to say goodbye; he had obviously wanted to get out of there as much as I did, as he had already left.
“As I was walking to the car, Gregg was leaving too, and he said, ‘Appearing on this will do a lot for you.’ I didn’t know what to say, so I smiled and said yes, but I was really thinking, ‘Yes, you have finally helped me decide to end my television career once and for all.’ I was done.”
Emma Phillips-Jennings
Former MasterChef contestant Emma Phillips-Jennings claimed Wallace thrust his groin at her face three times while she was crouching down at an oven.
The MasterChef host stepped down from the BBC show last week amid claims of his behaviour from 13 people over a 17 year period. The TV presenter has also been accused of groping individuals – with more people making allegations.
Former MasterChef contestant Emma Phillips-Jennings claimed Gregg Wallace thrust his groin at her face (
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BBC)
And now, in a fresh claim, former contestant Emma, who took part in the BBC competition in 2009, claimed Wallace also made an inappropriate sexual joke about meat while talking to her. The beauty therapist, 42, was cooking a stuffed trout dish when the incident, which was said to be edited out of the show, allegedly happened.
The star, who was 29 at the time, told The Sun: “Gregg asked me how I learned to cook and was it from my mother. I said, ‘No, because my mum’s Jewish and lived on a kibbutz where you have very set jobs and my dad was the chef in our family’.
“I said she hadn’t even seen raw meat until she met my father.” As soon as I said that, Gregg then said, ‘Yeeeaaaah, and he then showed her his meat’. He then thrust his groin towards me three times as I crouched down at the oven.” She added that, as it was a ‘low oven’, Gregg was near her face. She was ‘taken aback’ and was ‘so shocked’ by the incident.
