Kirstie Allsopp slams Gregg Wallace after ’embarrassing’ meeting where he ‘told her about sex act’ with his wife
TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp has hit out at disgraced MasterChef host Gregg Wallace, for his ‘unprofessional’ conduct when they first met.
The Location, Location, Location star told her social media following that Wallace, who stepped down from the BBC show, following allegations of inappropriate behaviour, made a sexually explicit comment that left her feeling ‘embarrassed’.
She said: “She said "Within 1hr of meeting Gregg Wallace he told me of a sex act that he & his partner at the time enjoyed “every morning”, she'd just left the room, we were filming a pilot."
"Did he get off on how embarrassed I was?" " It was totally unprofessional."
At the end of the post she included a hashtag which read: #middleclasswomanofacertainage, in response to Gregg's outburst over the weekend, where he branded his accusers, ‘middle class women of a certain age.”
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This week the Masterchef host officially stepped down from the show, after it emerged that the BBC had received 13 complaints about him over a 17 year period.
But over the weekend, Wallace, 60, put up a bullish defense of his reputation on social media.
He said: "I’ve been doing MasterChef for 20 years, amateur, celebrity and professional MasterChef, and I think, in that time, I have worked with over 4,000 contestants of all different ages, all different backgrounds, all walks of life."
"Apparently now, I’m reading in the paper, there’s been 13 complaints in that time. I can see the complaints coming from a handful of middle-class women of a certain age, just from Celebrity MasterChef. This isn’t right."
Indeed TV presenter Kirstie, 53, went on to explain why she didn’t report his inappropriate comments at the time.
She said: "Why say nothing? Because you feel, in no particular order, embarrassed, a prude, shocked, waiting for a male colleague to call him out, not wanting to “rock the boat”, thinking it’s better to plough on with the day, assuming you misheard/misunderstood or just don’t get the joke."
The ex-market trader officially stepped down from Masterchef last Thursday after it was revealed that the BBC were conducting an internal investigation into Gregg Wallace’s sexually inappropriate behaviour over a 17 year period.
A BBC spokesman said: "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."
Gregg Wallace's career to date
Gregg Wallace has been a familiar face on TV for years now thanks to his role as a judge on MasterChef - but let's take a closer look at his career so far...
- Gregg Wallace left school at 15 and started his career working on a fruit and veg stall in London.
- In 1989, he started George Allan's Greengrocers, a company that grew to a turnover of £7.5 million.
- Gregg's experience in the world of fruit and veg lead to him co-hosting Veg Talk on BBC Radio 4 with Charlie Hicks for seven years.
- He then became the first host of Saturday Kitchen in 2002, a role he held for a year before being replaced by Antony Worrall Thompson in 2003.
- At the same time, Gregg presented a number of food-related TV specials, including Veg Out for the Discovery Channel.
- Gregg landed his most notable TV role as a co-presenter and judge on BBC's competitive cooking show MasterChef in 2005. He stars alongside John Torode.
- In 2010 Gregg pursued another life-long dream of opening a restaurant. He opened the establishment Wallace & Co. in Putney.
- Then, in 2012, he opened Gregg's Bar & Grill in a joint venture with the Bermondsey Square Hotel.
- Gregg then scored a hosting gig with the BBC, presenting the documentary Supermarket Secrets in August 2013.
- Unfortunately, times were tough for Gregg, and in the same month, it was reported that one of his companies, West Veg Limited, had folded, owing more than £500,000.
- In 2014, both of his restaurants folded, with Wallace & Co owing suppliers £150,000.
- However, his TV career continued to thrive, and in 2015 became the regularly host of the award-winning documentary food series Eat Well for Less? Gregg helmed the show for eight years before stepping away.
- He also competed on Strictly Come Dancing.
- Gregg then made Telly history again when he revived the BBC's historical game show Time Commanders.
- More recently, the celebrity chef has presented a number of travel programmes such as Big Weekends with Gregg Wallace, South Africa with Gregg Wallace, and the food mockumentary, Gregg Wallace: The British Miracle Meat.