MasterChef anchorman Gregg Wallace probably has no idea what a favour he has done for the nation. His inappropriate shenanigans with women (allegedly) on the BBC programme has resulted in the Christmas specials being binned and consigned to the dustbin of broadcasting history, along with all of Jimmy Savile’s Top of The Pops episodes.
MasterChef, for the uninitiated, masquerades as a cookery programme. There are several versions across the world, but the BBC version is the progenitor. I quite like cookery programmes, when they actually tell me something about cooking. Programmes featuring Raymond Blanc and Rick Stein, in addition to featuring men who seem to me like all round good blokes, take you through the steps of preparing a dish. I have learned a few tricks and been introduced to new ingredients after watching these.
On the other hand, MasterChef features very little actual cooking. It is heavy on the drama of cooking (I know, I just read that again too) and on the people who turn up to compete for the ‘coveted’ (always ‘coveted’), but somewhat underwhelming Master Chef trophy. The competitors are under the watchful eye and the verbal cosh of some famous chefs. Whichever combination of chefs is present, they are always accompanied by ubiquitous egghead (he is bald, not an intellectual) Gregg Wallace.
Far too much time is spent scene setting, getting the back stories of the competing chefs who either do talking head type soliloquies to the camera, or respond to a series or utterly inane questions from Gregg himself. A typical opening question is “so what made you decide to enter MasterChef?” Not exactly in-depth stuff.
The answers are usually equally inane, a perfect example being “I’ve always liked cooking.” But now and then TV gold is struck, when someone tells Gregg that they used to watch their granny cooking. Extra points are available if the person comes from some far flung and economically deprived region of the world, where they were inevitably poor but they “was happy”. You get the idea.
Then the kicker question “and where’s your granny now?” Gregg will ask with a sad and probing countenance, when he knows perfectly well that granny kicked the bucket many years ago, preferably having died of cancer. Sobs ensue, the camera focuses on the well-rehearsed tears and carries on until Gregg says something like, “well, your granny would be proud of you now”. And the chef somehow manages to pull it together and get on with filleting a fish, or whatever the task at hand is. I only watch these things so that others may be spared.
So, we come to Gregg who is now being parboiled for some inappropriate comments of a sexualised nature to female contestants. The problem for poor old Gregg is that some of these contestants are high profile media and entertainment types who have featured on Celebrity Master Chef. I have to say that my reaction to this version of the programme is to ask who the purported ‘celebs’ are as, invariably, I have never heard of them. It should really be called Minor/ex/fading Celebrity MasterChef.
It is probably worth noting, at this stage, that Gregg had already recently been turfed out of his anchor role on his other BBC earner Inside the Factory, which looks at how our food is produced. Apparently, he was a bit on the fruity side of the production line with a few of the females on that programme, but it received very little publicity until the MasterChef debacle engulfed him.
The fact is, regardless of all his innuendo with rumours of worse to come, that Gregg Wallace is a talentless, ignorant and overbearing oaf. How this man, a former greengrocer, ever found himself on the telly in the first place is a mystery. As far as MasterChef, a cookery programme, is concerned he does not appear to cook. His knowledge about food comes from eating it. Formerly, in copious quantities, as he was well on the obese side of tubby in his early days. Latterly he has discovered the gym, has lost a lot of weight and delights in showing off his abdominal six-pack.
His contribution to MasterChef amounts to his superficial ‘interviews’ with the contestants, shouting out the time while the contestants cook against the clock, and then sampling the food they produce. To be fair, he is usually quite generous about the cooking, especially the puddings for which he has a penchant. The real chefs are often scathing about the food and dismissive of any excuses offered by the blubbering contestants. They are blubbering, as a poor performance results in them being ousted from the MasterChef kitchen, an announcement that is made by either by Gregg or the real chef, but always after a great deal of tension and dramatic music. Your granny may have died of cancer in the Caribbean but your soufflé failed to rise and it’s the end of the menu for you.
Gregg’s job at Inside the Factory is to run about the place stating the blindingly obvious and going ‘cor!’ and ‘blimey’’ and sometimes, betraying his Cockney roots, ‘cor blimey!”. He states such things as “so these are the crisps/biscuits/pies coming off the production line”. Yes, Gregg, we can see them; we are watching too.
Is Gregg Wallace a sex pest? We don’t know as these possible indicators remain allegations. But the discussion around it is interesting and revealing. To some women on the BBC Radio Today programme, not women involved in raising complaints, he is already guilty. Being asked about the Christmas specials of MasterChef being pulled, one pearl-clutcher said that women had to be protected from him so it was a good thing they were being pulled. She also added that, if he was proved innocent, then he could return. But if he is eventually proved innocent – of which there will be a fat chance, his career is toast – then what exactly are women being protected from?
Wallace issued a hilarious statement saying that the complainants were all ‘middle-class women of a certain age’. Undoubtedly one hundred percent accurate, but not quite the mot juste in this situation. He subsequently apologised but remains adamant, through his legal representatives, that he denies all the allegations.
The allegations are now being ramped up from innuendo to ‘groping and touching’ and thrusting his groin into someone’s face. This was, allegedly, filmed but cut out by the BBC. Who knows? But it seems odd that these were not top of the list, and have only come out now.
The hypocrisy regarding his innuendo is off the scale. Allegedly, he said “miso horny” to someone making miso soup. Stupid, and nobody with half a brain and an ounce of decency would say that. But he was not hired for his intellect or decency; he was hired for his working class cheeky chappie bluntness. Compare that, and many allegedly similar comments, with female celebrity chef Nigella Lawson going off to “oil her buns”. That gets a laugh because she is posh and, more importantly, female.
Got to go…my wife just told me she has a bun in the oven (chortle, chortle).
(Photograph: Richard Gillin from St Albans, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.
If you enjoy The New Conservative and would like to support our work, please consider buying us a coffee or sharing this piece with your friends – it would really help to keep us going. Thank you!
If all the programmes, in which the presenter — whether a talentless, ignorant and overbearing oaf or not — is promoted/promotes himself, at the expense of what is supposed to be his subject, were pulled, what would be left?
Books.
This kind of TV and its ‘celebrity’ presenters is and are frankly crap for the tattoo/nail parlour crowd (who can’t get enough of fake drama). The kind of innuendo and behaviour GW is being crucified for were until quite recently part of normal working life, taken too far the person doing it would become known as a twat and shamed by intelligent/strong women into reigning it in. These pile-ons are now part of the entertainment industry, yet no one asks the high profile millionaire victims why they didn’t say anything prior to the pile-on (and wouldn’t have, had they not seen an opportunity to refresh their PR and brand into popular victimhood, up there with suffering from a popular syndrome).
O, I say, Nathaniel! You — by commission — and Mr Watson — by ommission — are being not just horrid but really unfair to the celebrities who have appeared on Mr Wallace’s ‘shows’. Anybody would think they must have known what he was, that he was guaranteed to behave in a coarse and vulgar (or, as we now say, ‘inappropriate’) way but went on his ‘shows’ anyway just for the sake of the money, and are only denouncing him now (or, as we say, ‘calling him out’) because it’s cheap to do so. You make them sound, in their own way as — if anything — worse than he is! As if, having eaten their cake, they now want to have it too! Shame on you (as we say nowadays).
This word ‘inappropriate’ does puzzle me though. I can see how it might be thought inappropriate for a man to give a nudge-nudge and a wink-wink to a lamp-post (or –call me old-fashioned if you like — even another man) but to a woman?
Exactly so! A neat summing up and conclusion.
How the cookery programmes today differ from the celebrated Fanny and Johnny Craddock days.
On one programme where the bejewelled Fanny in her evening dress was demonstrating how to make donuts the monocled Johnny in his summing up of Fanny’s produce declared “And there lies the secret of good cooking, make your donuts like Fanny’s”!
I thought Johnny closed the programme by saying ‘and I hope all your donuts turn out looking like Fannys’. She was herself de-platformed because of an ill advised episode on another TV show, so it must be a long standing ‘build ’em up and knock ’em down’ British character trait.
Yes you are most probably correct. I was struggling to remember the exact words Johnny used. It was a gem though.
If you don’t like Gregg Wallace why don’t you just come right out and say so?
He has – see paragraph nr 9.
I think it is our TVs we should be consigning to the bin.
As always from Mr W: an accurate, amusing and perceptive summary of the situation.
I can think of another TV programme – actually a much better and more interesting one – involving craft repairs, where a certain prominent presenter from a similar background again does not add much value to the episodes but simply takes undue credit for the skilled work of others …
Pingback: News Round-Up – The Daily Sceptic