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'he's a vile man'
Gregg Wallace thrust his groin at my face THREE TIMES while I crouched at oven on Masterchef, contestant reveals
Emma Phillips-Jennings says Wallace’s offensive acts would have been caught on camera
A MASTERCHEF contestant has told how Gregg Wallace thrust his groin at her face three times as she crouched at an oven — in scenes edited out of the show.
Emma Phillips-Jennings, who was on the BBC cookery competition in 2009, said Wallace also made a crude sexual joke about meat.
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Beauty therapist Emma, 42, was preparing a stuffed trout dish when she claims Wallace made his crude gestures.
BBC News reported three fresh complaints against Wallace, 60, who has stepped down as MasterChef presenter.
It is the second allegation of BBC presenter Wallace harassing show contestants at their ovens after we reported that he groped a woman as she prepared her dish.
Meanwhile a young staffer on the show was understood to have complained after Wallace allegedly held her head and thrust his body towards her, The Daily Telegraph reported.
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Clips from the episode Emma appeared on before being voted off shows her wafting steam from her oven as she crouches in front of it.
Emma, then 29, said: “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.
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I was gobsmacked and found it disgusting. I was young
Emma
“It was a low oven so it meant he was near my face.
“I was completely taken aback. I was so shocked because he should not have been talking like that — and no one said anything to him or pulled him up about it.
MasterChef guest judge left in tears by Gregg Wallace's sick sex joke
“He approached with the camera crew but no one said anything.
“I was gobsmacked and found it unprofessional and disgusting.
“He had no shame. I found it dismissive and degrading and he was imitating my father, really, thrusting at me. No one wants to think of their father in that way.
“I was telling them something about my family and background. He was totally dismissive of it, This was filmed but not used.
“I was young at the time and naïve, and this was a big moment in my life and he ruined it.
“I was furious when he made those comments. He was vile. I was not of a certain age at that time. I might have expected ‘banter’ like that if I’d appeared on Little Britain but not on a cooking show.
“I haven’t watched an episode of MasterChef since.
“I can’t believe it’s taken so long for stuff to come out.
“I’ve been telling my friends about him for years and have had loads of messages since the scandal broke saying I was right.”
Emma, who runs a wellness business, had made it through to the final 130 contestants from 15,000 who auditioned and was excited as she arrived at a North London studio for filming with Wallace and co-presenter John Torode.
Along with five others, she had 50 minutes to prepare and cook a dish from trout, potatoes, polenta, sugar snap peas, beetroot, eggs, broccoli and tomato puree.
She said: “When I walked into the studio, I was a nervous wreck
“It was a big moment in my life and I was a single mum who had just gone through a separation.
“It was a really important moment for me to feel empowered as a woman. But I was really taken aback by Gregg.”
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Emma, of Herne Bay, Kent, says Wallace’s offensive acts would have been caught on camera but believes MasterChef production company Banijay “edited it out to protect their star”.
Yesterday, she re-watched the episode with The Sun and said: “You can see how nervous I am. And I can see where they’ve cut it just before it’s about to happen. It still cringes me out to this day.”
During judging, Wallace praised Emma’s potato puree with garlic but said her tomato puree was too strong and sweet.
She also claims that Wallace joked another female contestant had cocaine on her nose.
She added: “When she said it was flour, he replied, ‘It should be cocaine or you’ll never make it as a chef’. I think he was just trying to show off but I felt that was inappropriate too.”
Emma said she decided to speak out after Wallace posted a message blaming “women of a certain age” for complaints. He later apologised.
She said: “I was really shocked — it was like he couldn’t see that he had done anything wrong.
There seems to be no accountability for his behaviour which is what I found disgusting
Emma
“There seems to be no accountability for his behaviour, which is what I found disgusting.
“I don’t think he should have behaved that way towards a young and nervous contestant. It’s not a case of being ‘woke’ by complaining — it shouldn’t be that sort of programme and it makes me wonder what sort of person he is.
“Women need to feel safe and that just was not the environment where that could happen.”
Wallace last week stepped down from MasterChef, which he has hosted since 2005, after accusations he made sexual comments towards staff and celeb guests on a range of programmes over 17 years.
He has denied any behaviour of a sexually harassing nature. Wallace is being investigated by MasterChef producers Banijay UK, which said it had no record of Emma’s complaint.
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A spokesman said: “Banijay UK takes this matter incredibly seriously but while the investigation is ongoing, we won’t be commenting on individual allegations.”
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.”
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