CLEMMIE MOODIE
Gregg Wallace has been roasted but BBC needs grilling too… why did they continue to promote an absolute oaf?
Why was he allowed to stay on primetime television for SEVENTEEN YEARS after the first complaint emerged?
SO Gregg with two Gs has been perfectly roasted, with a side of lightly seasoned hubris and a good dollop of about-bloody-time.
Meanwhile the BBC, with two Bs, has served up a recipe for disaster in its decision — time and time again — to stand by Mr Wallace.
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As the allegations continue to emerge — ranging from poor-taste “dad jokes” to all-out inappropriateness — there are as many questions to be answered by the BBC as there are Wallace.
Why was he allowed to stay on primetime television for SEVENTEEN YEARS after the first complaint emerged?
And why was he actively promoted?
Why, when BBC execs have admitted warning Gregg about his behaviour, was no further action taken?
READ MORE ON GREGG WALLACE
Why, when the Times newspaper revealed in 2023 that he’d stepped back from Inside The Factory, following allegedly inappropriate remarks to female staff, did the BBC not start asking questions?
Why, when The Sun printed a front page story in October about Gregg allegedly making sexual comments to a colleague while filming Impossible Celebrities in 2017, did the BBC not take action?
And why, only when BBC News — an independent arm working within the Corporation — emailed the BBC and Banijay, the production firm behind Master- Chef, did Aunty finally kick into gear?
Because, for the past few months, all we’ve been hearing from under-pressure execs is that “lessons have been learned”.
Most read in The Sun
That a scandal-hit organisation, one funded by you and I, is now zero-tolerance and intent on clearing out its dead wood and toxic protagonists.
Gone then, were the monstrous Huw Edwards (with a token effort to claw back the £40,000 they gave the newsreader as a bonus after his arrest), “sleazy” Jermaine Jenas, and “bullying” Strictly dancers Giovanni Pernice and Graziano Di Prima.
Gregg Wallace returns to screens for the first time amid ‘sexual comments’ investigation
The Strictly Come Dancing probe — much like the one now launched against Gregg — concluded with Director- General Tim Davie apologising and pledging “never to tolerate unacceptable behaviour of any kind”.
Except for 17 years, it has been turning a blind eye to Gregg’s alleged behaviour.
Gregg, who has reminded celebrities everywhere precisely why they pay thousands of pounds a month for a PR when he slammed his accusers as “middle-class women of a certain age”, is not the first man to be “of his time”.
I mean, whack a sock on your willy and dance around in front of women who drive a Land Rover and dry off their Barbours on the Aga and you’re a sex pest; do it to a group of working-class women and what LOLs! How they roll about in hysterics.
Come on Gregg, get real.
As an aside, I was one of those women he slated after I wrote about my experience on a 2014 journalists’ MasterChef . . . “middle-class” I can take, the “of a certain age” I’m still grappling with, tbh.
I digress. There is not a Western woman alive who hasn’t faced the experiences being described today.
My friend’s boss, for instance, made the women in the office stand up and rank themselves in order of attractiveness.
'SMOKING GUN'
We have all had men cracking unfunny jokes in the workplace, and eye-rolled them off.
Yesterday, back on PR-track, Gregg apologised for these offensive comments — perhaps recognising he had denigrated a core swathe of the MasterChef demographic.
Unless a smoking gun of absolute horror emerges, Gregg presumably counts himself unlucky.
Times have changed, and some believe we shouldn’t be punishing behaviour that was acceptable at the time, long after the event.
But this isn’t really about Gregg.
It is about why the BBC continually stuck its fingers in its ears and wilfully promoted an absolute oaf.
Where was its curiosity when the first complaint rolled in?
The BBC seems to have pretended Gregg’s bad behaviour wasn’t happening.
But it was. And it must have known.
And in today’s world — or, indeed, any world — that simply isn’t good enough.
AS a side note to the ongoing Wallace furore, the BBC is missing a trick here.
The show it really needs to make is Menopausal MasterChef, whereby Gregg boulders over, making lame, sexist gags to a bunch of women battling hot flushes and hormones.
Now that would make good telly.
ROB IS JAB FAB
KUDOS to Robbie Williams for admitting Ozempic is the contributing factor to his impressively buff frame.
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If I read about one more newly skeletal celeb claiming they have got the body of their dreams thanks to two litres of water a day and transcendental meditation, I will . . . well, I don’t know what I’ll do.
Not much. But continue to rant here.
Honesty is even more respectable than a six-pack.
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WOULD you pay £229 for a pair of Zara hotpants?”, read a headline on the front page of the Daily Telegraph last week.
No.
PEST OF HEALTH
EVERY now and then a column short – one of these things – writes itself.
This is one such short (see text message below).
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Happily, the Queen Consort – in as far as we know – has no verminny skin issues.
Rather, it was my parents’ 12-year-old shih tzu, Camilla Parker Bowles – now happily flea’d and wormed – who last week received this text reminder from the vets.
MUM OTI DOESN’T DESERVE WEB HATE
IT’S 2024 and women can vote! Hell, they can even be Prime Minister.
But what they can’t do, apparently, is have kids and return to work too soon.
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I’m A Celebrity star and all-round good egg Oti Mabuse detailed the gross abuse she faced for appearing on Dancing On Ice eight weeks after the birth of her daughter.
She has also had unfair criticism thrown at her for daring to go into the Australian jungle a year after the tot was born.
Come on, guys.
It is not like she’s leaving the girl to fend for itself, hanging out daily expressed milk in bottles with “drink me” labels attached.
She’s earning a six-figure sum to ensure her beloved child has the best start in life.
Were a man to do this, no one would have batted an eyelid, let alone take to social media to vent their spleen.
By putting personal and professional ambition above matriarchal convention, the dancer will be able to spend more time with her child once home, because she has earned the financial security to do so.
Oti is as lovely off-screen as she appears on it – cut her some slack.
GLAD IT ENDED
OVER the weekend I watched Gladiator II, so that you don’t have to.
Essentially the much-hyped sequel, starring Paul Mescal, is 92 per cent machismo fighting and eight per cent dubious CGI.
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Spoiler alert: The only interesting woman in the entire film carks it at the end.
Watch Paddington In Peru instead.
IS there no end to Gen Z’s self- flagellating misery?
Nearly half of them plan on embracing a “dry Christmas”, according to a poll.
As dull as it is predictable.
BIAS OF LEFTIE SCRIPT
THE Archers has come under fire for underplaying the effects of the Government’s inheritance tax raid on small family farms.
READ MORE SUN STORIES
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In the episode on November 22, David Archer, one of the BBC show’s main characters – and a farmer – said: “There’s a bit of anger about this new inheritance tax on farms” to which – in an almost LOL bit of leftie propaganda – his pal, Leonard Berry, replied: “But we need those taxes to pay for things like the NHS.”
Who needs the Guardian, eh?
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