GREGG Wallace’s career was hanging by a thread yesterday when he stepped down from MasterChef amid a slew of allegations of inappropriate behaviour.
The TV star, 60, who is now under an external investigation, was struck by historic complaints from at least 13 people including Newsnight‘s Kirsty Wark.
The fresh allegations include him being “very touchy-feely” and making “disgusting sex-related jokes” across the years, as well as performing a “silly dance” while wearing just a sock over his genitals.
The Peckham-born former market trader, whose supposed misconduct on MasterChef spans from 2005 until 2022, also allegedly mimicked a sex act in front of a crew member and made “a joke about rape”.
Gregg and the BBC are said to be “fully cooperating” with the external investigation and the star thanked fans for their support last night but has made no further comment.
Now a slew of celebrities spoke out about the star including The Sun’s Ulrika Jonsson, Rod Stewart on behalf of wife Penny Lancaster and Geordie Shore star Charlotte Crosby – he’s not responded to any of the claims so far.
The new accusations come just a month after a former Inside The Factory employee alleged he used to “mortify” colleagues by whipping off his shirt, boasted about his sex life and made “consistent inappropriate comments” to women.
It could be a damning blow for Gregg, who has faced a number of scandals in past- from cheating allegations to bankruptcy and even admitting to being arrested in relation to his football hooligan past.
Long before becoming a TV favourite and fronting shows ranging from Saturday Kitchen to Time Commanders, Eat Well For Less and Supermarket Secrets, Gregg had a very different life.
He left school at 15 years old to work at Covent Garden’s Fruit and Veg Market before going into sales and later starting a greengrocers business that would eventually turn over £7.5million.
But at the same time, the Peckham-born star – who has lost nearly five stone in recent years – was having brushes with the law as a a self-confessed former “Millwall hooligan”,
He told Zoo magazine that the South London football club had a “fierce reputation at the time” and a “large percentage of people that were able to cause havoc”, including himself.
They think I’m a Millwall football hooligan and a womaniser, but I’m not. I like reading history books with a glass of fine wine. And family. Like I say, I love family life
Gregg
“I got arrested for assault when I was 20… But my Millwall days are long behind me [now],” Gregg admitted.
“I was a product of my area. Police were making hundreds of arrests at every home game back then. Getting nicked was like a social pastime!”
Gregg’s also faced a few challenges in his love life too – having married four times, including one union where his wife walked out on him six weeks after they said ‘I do’.
That first wedding disaster was with a woman named Christine in 1991, which he admitted he knew was a mistake before they tied the knot in his autobiography.
He jokingly called it “possibly the shortest marriage in the world” and revealed their slapdash ceremony was followed by food in a pie and mash shop.
Next Gregg married pastry chef Denise Lovall in 1999, but they divorced five years later after she claimed he had an affair with an employee.
After meeting third wife Heidi Brown in 2009, Denise fumed to People magazine that the star would “never change” and warned his new beau against settling down with him.
Gregg would eventually gain full custody of the couple’s two children and Denise died in 2017 after an addiction battle.
Around the time of her death, he told The Times: “She was so ill and it’s so sad… I’ve had some pretty bad press and people get me wrong.
“They think I’m a Millwall football hooligan and a womaniser, but I’m not. I like reading history books with a glass of fine wine. And family. Like I say, I love family life.”
I said, ‘I am not happy swapping my young, fun, sexy girlfriend for an exhausted mum’
Gregg Wallace
Heidi, who met Gregg on Twitter, became the third Mrs Wallace in 2011, but the pair separated 14 months on from a lavish wedding ceremony.
Reflecting on his many nuptials, the TV star would later say: “The third one was a huge mistake.
“Probably the unhappiest I have ever been in my life but she was a teacher and was really good with the kids.”
Gregg went on to have several dates with beautiful women, which he described as like “riding in my Jag with the roof down” whenever he accompanied them to restaurants.
He called his serial dating “an absolute game of chance” but was later warned by his shrink that he would never find happiness if he “kept picking women like he picked cars”, according to the Mail.
Then in an unlikely meet cute in 2013, Gregg got talking to future wife Anne-Marie, known as ‘Anna’, after she quizzed him about whether rhubarb went with duck on X.
Recounting the story, he said he noticed she was “pretty” in her photo and added: “Yes, rhubarb, which was considered an aphrodisiac in medieval times, brought us together.”
Anna, who is 21 years his junior, initially thought the person she was talking to online was “an imposter”, but after meeting she quickly fell for Gregg and the pair married at Hever Castle, in Kent, in 2016.
The couple would welcome their first son, Sid, three years later.
But before agreeing to have a child, Gregg – who said “I wouldn’t, at my age, choose to have children” – set out some demands.
“I had two conditions,” he admitted. “I said, ‘I am not happy swapping my young, fun, sexy girlfriend for an exhausted mum.
“But if that’s what you want I want to get help in. The other condition was, ‘I want to have a fortnight’s holiday with you every year without a baby.’”
Unbeknownst to the couple, Anna suffered with undiagnosed endometriosis, which was exacerbated during the pregnancy.
When Sid was nine months old, she had to have a hysterectomy and part of her intestine removed, during three operations, which Gregg described as “very scary”.
Earlier this year, an infamous Telegraph interview led to Gregg being accused of bad parenting.
In the chat, the star detailed spending an hour and a half with his son Sid, who is non-verbal autistic, and dedicating more time to computer games.
Referring to the four-year-old, he described how Sid “used to be in his own world” but more recently started to “seek company and show eye contact”.
Further in the chat, Gregg discussed locking himself away from the family so that he could enjoy gaming and said it stemmed from being “an amateur historian”.
He said: “I spend two hours by myself in my home office playing Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia, set in 878 AD. I prefer turn-based strategy computer games to fast ones that require reflex.”
The comments caused a storm on X, formerly Twitter, with some saying his responses were “magnificently Partridgian” – referring to gaffe-prone comedy character Alan Partridge – while others mocked him as “such a bloody k***”.
Gregg also faced what he branded “cruel” backlash regarding his son, after some accused him of “not wanting” his child.
In response to claims he didn’t spend enough time with her son, he insisted he was with Sid “in the house all the time” but the article concept was “not logging every minute of the day”.
Gregg also added: “I’m almost going to cry over this – people saying that Sid was unwanted. It took us two years to conceive with Sid. Two years.”
Gregg’s venture into broadcasting followed working on market stalls and a chance opportunity to appear on BBC Radio 4 programme Veg Talk.
But after his presenting career took off, several of his business ventures collapsed – including greengrocery George Allan’s, which once turned over £7.5million before being put into receivership in 2002.
The legal process sees a ‘receiver’ appointed to manage a company’s assets to pay back a creditor after a business has defaulted on loan payments.
In 2013, West Veg Limited, which Gregg was a part-owner of, went bust with debts of more than £500,000 and employees claimed they were owed thousands in unpaid wages and holiday pay.
Gregg’s rep of the time blamed “catastrophic farming conditions” on the collapse and said the ‘majority of staff’ were paid what they were owed under the government’s redundancy scheme.
The following year, both of the star’s restaurants with Wallace & Co folded. They owed suppliers £150,000 and left the star £293,000 out of pocket.
Wholesales and catering equipment suppliers received just £57,000 of what they were owed after his eateries were stung by poor reviews and failed to attract customers.
Despite the losses and unpaid sums, Gregg later told the White Wine Question Time podcast that he found bankruptcy “utterly liberating”.
He said: “What you’re worried about is losing things. Once those things are gone, it’s completely and utterly liberating.
“You can’t worry about losing them anymore. After the house is gone, the marriage is gone, the cars have gone, that’s it, you don’t have to worry anymore.”
They think I’m a Millwall football hooligan and a womaniser, but I’m not
Gregg Wallace
Gregg felt those who ran failed businesses were wrongly labelled “crooks” for “making mistakes along the way” in business, instead insisting they were vital for success.
“In America, they kind of expect people to get their businesses wrong. Over here, you’re some kind of crook… Stupidity and ignorance is not a crime,” he said.
“There is no way of building a business successfully without making mistakes along the way. There is no such thing as failure. If you’ve learned a lesson from it, it was just a lesson.”
Last year, in a daring TV hoax, Gregg fronted a Channel 4 documentary titled The British Miracle Meat, in which he appeared to be extolling the benefits of cannibalism and gleefully tucked into a “human steak”.
The show, which had no disclaimers about being a joke and faced an immediate backlash, featured him saying: “This is engineered human meat. That’s right, a protein made from human cells.”
Many believed the programme was real until a section where a woman said she donated her own flesh to a ‘donor farm’ for money and another part where it claimed kids were being used for a premium product.
GREGG Wallace had an impressive rise to fame – having started out working on a London fruit and veg stall.
His broadcast career would be kickstarted after being invited to co-present Veg Talk on BBC Radio 4 alongside Charlie Hicks.
In 2002, Gregg became the original presenter of Saturday Kitchen, until he was replaced by Anthony Worrall Thompson a year later
He would go onto present Veg out on Discovery Channel and Follow That Tomato on The Food Channel, the latter of which earned him a Royal Television Society award for best lifestyle programme.
In the late 2000s, Gregg fronted The Money Programme and by 2013, hosted Supermarket Secrets about food sourcing and distribution, as well as Harvest, a three-part documentary about produce.
That same year he presented Eat Well For Less and by 2015, started Inside The Factory, which he fronted until last year when he stepped down.
Gregg has also branched out with shows including Time Commanders, a historical game show, and several travel series including Big Weekends and South Africa Wiht Gregg Wallace.
Last year, he fronted Gregg Wallace: The British Miracle Meat – a mockumentary about human flesh being turned into patties.
Gregg is best known for MasterChef, which he has been a co-presenter and judge on since 2005.
He’s also made guest appearances on shows including Celebrity Catchphrase, The Chase and Tipping Point, and appeared on Strictly Come Dancing in 2014. He was eliminated by the public vote in his second week.
“It’s all gravy, baby, because our babies taste great with gravy,” a chirpy voiceover for a promotional film said in the mockumentary,
It was then that many realised it was a reference to Jonathan Swift’s 1729 satirical essay A Modest Proposal, which suggested poor Irish people sell children as food to the rich.
Despite being a joke, many were furious, labelling it “disgusting” and insisting the “Black Mirror” inspired show belittled the seriousness of the cost of living crisis – leading to more than 400 Ofcom complaints.
Earlier this month, an unnamed insider came forward with claims of misconduct.
They said the incidents occurred between 2018 until last year and allegedly occurred on multiple shows including Inside The Factory, which Gregg quit after seven series following an “argument”.
Vehemently denying the allegations, the four-times married dad-of-three insisted he had “never flirted or hit on anybody” since meeting his wife Anne-Marie ‘Anna’ Sterpini, whom he wed in 2016.
He continued to tell fans on Instagram that “nobody” had accused him of that type of behaviour and that a BBC investigation into his remarks found he “hadn’t said anything sexual”.
Gregg said: “I have always been true to my wife Anna and have never flirted or hit on anybody in the 12 years that I met her and fell in love with her.
“And it’s important that. So that people don’t misunderstand that. That I am true to my wife.”
Yesterday Gregg stepped down after the slew of claims came out against him including Kirsty Wark insisting his jokes and comments were “really, really in the wrong place”.
His lawyers say it is “entirely false” that he engages in sexually harassing behaviour and now Banijay UK, who creates MasterChef, are launching an external investigation.
“This week the BBC received complaints from individuals in relation to historical allegations of misconduct while working with presenter Gregg Wallace on one of our shows.
“While this review is under way, Gregg Wallace will be stepping away from his role on MasterChef and is committed to fully co-operating throughout the process.
“Banijay UK’s duty of care to staff is always a priority and our expectations regarding behaviour are made clear to both cast and crew on all productions.”
