Sometimes, you just have to hand it to the Daily Star for capturing the zeitgeist perfectly. They famously did it with Liz Truss and the lettuce and on Monday (December 2nd), they did it again over Gregg Wallace and the furore you couldn’t keep off the front pages, tabloid and broadsheet, and out of the TV and radio news bulletins, the phone-in shows and the wild west of social media for days on end.
“When you’re in a really, really, really deep hole...stop digging!” the Star’s front page advised the MasterChef star who has variously landed himself in the soup and trying to jump out of it only managed the trip from the frying pan into the proverbial fire.
With its customary chutzpah this most tabloid of tabloids presented Page1 as a, ‘Cut Out And Keep Crisis Management Advice For Anybody Called Gregg’.
Funnily enough, the ‘deep hole and stop digging’ maxim was the one both GB News presenter Anne Diamond and yours truly uttered simultaneously the day before as we watched Wallace’s latest home movie attempt to turn down the heat on a firestorm almost certain to turn the hole he’s been digging into a career grave. This was the one where staring into camera like a blameless and perplexed man in denial he tried to brand his mounting list of accusers as “just a handful of middle-class women of a certain age”.
Crisis management? When you’re in a hole stop digging? Either Gregg has never heard the old saying and he doesn’t have PR advisers with a clue about crisis management or, if he does, he ignores them in favour of defiantly cooking up his own increasingly messy stew.
Elsewhere, the headlines offered little refuge from boiling point. Sample the Daily Mail Splash: ‘BBC WAS WARNED 4 TIMES ABOUT WALLACE’ with the words ‘4 TIMES’ in standout red type. Never slow to look a gift horse in the mouth when it comes to kicking the BBC where it hurts, the Mail has devoted several front pages, double page spreads and a leader column or two to the Wallace saga, with more guaranteed. And for once, alas, I’m struggling find too many holes in the Mail’s coverage.
The Metro front page rivalled The Daily Star in the headline stakes with ‘WOMEN OF A CERTAIN RAGE!’ while the Mirror went for a splash headline ‘DisasterChef’ and the Daily Telegraph settled on the more mundane ‘Wallace: middle-class women of a certain age caused row’ for its front-page lead headline.
While not splashing on the Wallace furore, the Guardian found front page room for a story headlined ‘Outrage over Wallace’s ‘middle-class women’ jibe’ with a devastating quote from Dame Vera Baird KC, the former victims’ commissioner for England and Wales, accusing the BBC of being “in the dark ages” for tolerating allegedly sexually inappropriate conduct by its male stars.
Dame Vera went on: “It is shocking that repeatedly we see the kind of behaviour being tolerated by the BBC, who do seem to disregard the obligations they have to protect people who go on television.” She described Wallace as displaying “the typical behaviour of a sexually predatory male. As soon as he’s criticised for his conduct, he demeans the people who are criticising him, demeans the women — implying they’re all delicate flowers, middle class, and all of a certain age.”
The Guardian story — and remember, this is a title sans an anti-BBC agenda — flagged up the corporation’s recent mishandling of the Huw Edwards scandal and reminded readers of the damning 2016 report finding the BBC guilty of missing chances to stop abuse by its top TV stars Jimmy Savile and Stuart Hall amid a ‘culture of fear’. (Declaration of interest here — I was the editor legally thwarted from exposing Savile way back in 1994, have featured in a series of subsequent documentaries, including a BBC one, and it was one reason why I found myself invited to appear on air half a dozen times over the Wallace storm.)
Déjà vu
Suffice to say the accusations against Wallace are nowhere near the scale of those scandals above, but there is a common denominator that continues to bedevil the BBC. The power nexus where big names behave unacceptably toward powerless junior staff and complaints and suspicions are ignored, swept under the carpet to protect ‘The Talent’ and that most stars behaving badly escape with a warning and an unfulfilled promise not to do it again!
But Gregg, the mounting evidence suggests, did it again... and again... and again.
The BBC’s mitigation is that it was it own news department, independent of the entertainment side, that last week exposed the allegations against Wallace citing 13 women over a 17-year period. That 13 figure now looking more like the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Rumours also persist, fairly or not, that the BBC investigation sped up because a number of newspapers were also digging into Wallace. (Another declaration of interest here. I was part of the BBC’s excellent public interest exposé of the Fayed scandal and am both a supporter and critic of the corporation. But, like the much bigger Savile and Huw Edwards scandals, the corporation’s crass handling of the Wallace case would require defending the indefensible).
It’s ironic too that the momentum has been partly driven by famous women who appeared on the celebrity versions of MasterChef and had less to lose by finally going public than junior, often freelance workers fearful of the broadcasting career cost of whistleblowing. The highly respected BBC Newsnight veteran, Kirsty Wark, featured prominently in the initial bulletin-leading BBC News report last week. Wark recounting alleged ‘sexualised’ misconduct by Wallace dating back to her 2011 appearance on Celebrity MasterChef. Quite what she did, or didn’t, tell senior BBC execs at the time isn’t exactly clear.
Since then, the likes of Kirstie Allsop, Aasmah Mir and Emma Kennedy have publicly denounced their experience of Wallace’s “unacceptable behaviour” as contestants on Celebrity MasterChef. It’s fair to say that their belated decision to go public has given other non-famous contestants and production staff the courage to now come forward.
Allsopp, host of Channel 4’s long running hit show Location, Location, Location, complained about Wallace telling an offensive rape joke and constantly talking about his sex life.
Radio presenter Mir lodged complaints against Wallace in 2017 and produced for the Sunday Times the email traffic with a senior BBC manager to back it up.
Author and actor Kennedy, who won the 2012 celebrity version, insists she reported her concerns to production staff after witnessing another woman’s bottom being touched by Wallace, saying, “They knew then. They knew before then, and they’ve known since.” She said she later raised her concerns with the show’s PR team... “the only topic of conversation was when the problem with GW was going to come out”. But not for years apparently.
Courtesy of The Observer and other newspapers, we now know that a letter containing multiple allegations of “inappropriate behaviour” by Wallace was submitted to the BBC in 2022 but failed to trigger any formal investigation or action.
The letter described a “pattern of behaviour” by Wallace that “clearly fails to meet the sexual harassment and bullying standards that prohibit unwelcome sexual advances and sexual innuendo.”
Dawn Elrick, the director and producer who sent the 2022 letter on behalf of a number of women who contacted her, told the media this weekend that the BBC suggested each individual would have to make their own direct complaints to the corporation. Something those in fear of the career damage potential shied away from. Ms Elrick says she also submitted the allegations to the BBC via Navex Global, an external whistleblowing service in 2022 but has never heard back.
For its part, the BBC appears to be over eager to pass the investigatory buck to Banijay UK, the international independent company that makes the MasterChef series for the corporation. In the court of public opinion, that simply won’t wash. MasterChef is undeniably perceived by the public as a BBC show and promoted as such and Gregg Wallace as a major BBC star.
With pressure mounting for the show to be scrapped, whether or not Wallace returns (highly unlikely), the BBC can reasonably justify continuing with the current pre-recorded series featuring him for the sake of the contestants. But the prospect of the Christmas Special being aired is receding fast, leaving a big hole in the festive schedule. The big question then is whether the show can survive at all in future with a new co-presenter joining longtime stalwart John Torode against whom no complaints have been and who (to Gregg Wallace’s apparent annoyance) has ducked coming out in defence of his co-star of 17 years.
The BBC, meanwhile, are now acknowledging a history of complaints about Wallace over the years, saying he was spoken to about his conduct but remaining remarkably coy about the details and why he was allowed to continue.
The coyness might not last long into the new year. My sources tell me parliament’s cross-party culture and media select committee plans its own inquiry into the Wallace collection of complaints and could extend it into the BBC’s {mis) handling of the Huw Edwards scandal. Something the committee was keen to do until the surprise general election intervened.
Wallace’s belated Monday afternoon apology for dismissing his accusers as “middle-class women of a certain age” is unlikely to take the heat off the situation or ease the pressure on the BBC. In his latest video clip, the beleaguered presenter said, “I wasn’t in a good head space when I posted it, I’ve been under a huge amount of stress, a lot of emotion, I felt very alone, under siege yesterday when I posted it.”
But as one of his accusers described it to me after viewing it, “just self-serving twaddle from a man with a massive ego trying to save the career he’s only got himself and his behaviour to blame for destroying. No surprise he’s apologising in light of the increasing media revelations, the prime minister’s office calling his remarks completely inappropriate and misogynistic and the broadcasting industry union BECTU declaring the allegations about his misconduct raise serious questions about wider cultural issues. This has opened a Pandora’s Box of issues and Gregg Wallace is deservedly making himself a pariah in the business.”
In a wickedly devastating debunking of Wallace’s protestations, the headline on the Guardian’s acerbic columnist Marina Hyde’s take on November 29th rather said it all: “I would tell him to put a sock on it, but isn’t that what caused the problem?”. A reference to the complaint that the presenter suddenly appeared on the MasterChef set stark naked with only a sock covering his penis.
Well, sorry Gregg, Auntie Beeb and some other TV channels, the lineup of people prepared to sock it to you is only going to keep on boiling over like a dish with the oven left on too long.
Despite a heavyweight domestic and international news day on Monday, Gregg Wallace’s face continued to occupy front page space in Tuesday’s national papers. The focus being on his partial “apology” and the BBC’s divisive decision to keep airing the MasterChef pre-records.
‘Boiling Point’ was The Sun’s Splash headline over the growing anger at the BBC refusing to ditch the current series featuring Wallace. It followed the paper’s Monday front page bluntly urging, ‘Shut Your Cakehole, Gregg!’.
Tuesday’s Daily Mail front page went for “BBC Bosses Refuse To Take ‘Misogynist’ Gregg Wallace Off The Air”. The Telegraph ran an almost identical headline on its Tuesday Page1.
The online Independent led on Tuesday with ‘MasterChef Meltdown: Wallace forced to eat humble pie-so will BBC cancel hit show?’
Once again, the Mirror and Express made the Wallace saga Tuesday’s front page lead by focusing on his “apology” failing to reduce the heat on the BBC.
You can safely bet the headlines didn’t do much for pre-Christmas cheer in director general Tim Davie’s office as he anticipated another high profile new year parliamentary grilling.
My info is that the number of women who have or are preparing historical complaints against Wallace now tops 30 and rising, providing plenty of food for thought for BBC bosses. While those headline writers with an appetite for puns and word play won’t be starved of plenty more opportunities to keep dishing it out.
