MasterChef host faces the heat away from the kitchen

Gregg Wallace is stepping back from the long-running BBC show while claims of misconduct are probed. Nick Hilton looks at the story of the greengrocer-turned-TV presenter

Gregg Wallace was always an unlikely TV star. Prematurely bald, stout, and the proud wearer of thick glasses, he seemed destined for an unglamorous life amid the vegetable stalls of the capital, rather than on TV screens across the country. And yet, the presenter, who yesterday stepped back from his role as a judge on MasterChef after a series of historic sexual misconduct allegations came to light, has made himself part of the furniture at the BBC. And that makes his rapid fall from grace even more troubling for the corporation, though Wallace’s lawyers say it is entirely false that he engages in behaviour of a sexually harassing nature.

Wallace was born in Peckham, in southeast London, in 1964. The Sixties were a time when Peckham, a traditionally workingclass neighbourhood with a large African-Caribbean population, started to be redeveloped and re-energised, turning it into a vibrant, multicultural and upwardly mobile area. Yet, Wallace’s parents broke up when he was young and, by his own admission, he “lost all direction”. He left school at the age of 14, becoming an apprentice greengrocer, working at the world-famous Covent Garden Market, the mecca of British fruit and veg.

It was during his childhood in London that Wallace was sexually abused by the husband of a babysitter. He was just eight years old. “He would touch me and get me to touch him and kiss me as well,” he told the Men In Mind mental health podcast in 2023. “If by chance a young person is listening to this,” he went on, “it’s not your fault.” He first wrote about this experience of childhood sexual abuse in his 2012 autobiography Life on a Plate, and, in 2016, told ITV’s Loose Women that he felt guilty about it. “You feel like you’re playing some part in it – and of course you haven’t,” he told the panel.