There was something bleakly inevitable about Gregg Wallace’s response.
After a number of women raised concerns about the television presenter’s behaviour during filming of BBC One’s MasterChef, he posted a video online in which he addressed the complaints against him.
They had been made, he said, by ‘middle class women of a certain age’.
Wallace’s attempt to win the sympathy of the public backfired spectacularly and led, a day later, to a second video in which he apologised for the first.
But who can blame him for trying? Wallace is far from the only person who thinks the views of such women may be dismissed.
To be an assertive middle-aged woman, these days, is to risk being branded ‘a Karen’, shorthand for a woman considered by others to be ‘entitled’ in the way she behaves.
There is no equivalent for men because we’re allowed to stand up for ourselves without having our characters torn to shreds.
Production company Banijay is investigating complaints about Wallace, who has stepped down from his role on MasterChef.
But while this – the only appropriate course of action – is to be welcomed, it is also long overdue.
Complaints
Wallace denies any wrongdoing and is, of course, entitled to the presumption of innocence, but we now know that complaints about his behaviour are not new.
A number of women have come forward to say they raised concerns about remarks he made to them during filming of the cookery competition.
A letter containing multiple allegations of inappropriate workplace behaviour by Wallace was sent to the BBC in 2022 but no action was taken.
The letter – sent by producer and director Dawn Elrick on behalf of a number of women who had contacted her – alleged a pattern of behaviour by the presenter which ‘clearly fails to meet the sexual harassment and bullying standards that prohibit unwelcome sexual advances and sexual innuendo’.
It has also emerged that, back in 2017, Wallace was told by a BBC executive that his conduct on set was ‘unacceptable and cannot continue’, after the broadcaster Aasmah Mir complained about sexist comments that Wallace had made during filming of Celebrity MasterChef.
Ignored
You might have thought that in this day and age –especially after the #MeToo movement during which women across the world spoke up about their appalling treatment at work by powerful men – that the BBC would have been quicker to act.
But I’m afraid the culture of the corporation caused the problem to be ignored.
For a few weeks after leaving school in 1987, I worked in the record library at BBC Scotland and quickly learned that those who appear on screen are given special treatment.
How I cringed when I heard producers and directors refer, without irony, to presenters and actors as ‘the talent’.
There is something deeply unhealthy about a workplace culture which is set up in order to pander to a few employees at the top. This makes some feel all-powerful and leaves others fearful of speaking up.
Following Aasmah Mir’s complaint, an internal BBC investigation looked into allegations of ‘sexual jokes’ and other sexualised language that was said to have made colleagues uncomfortable.
It was found that Wallace’s behaviour had been ‘unacceptable and unprofessional’.
Not so unacceptable and unprofessional that he wasn’t allowed to keep his £400,000-a-year job, however.
But, then, the BBC has form for sweeping problems under the carpet in the hope they’ll go away.
The newsreader Huw Edwards, who was this year found guilty of making indecent images of children, was taken off air by the BBC in 2023 after allegations that he paid a teenager for sexually explicit photographs.
It later emerged that, in May 2021, a complaint was lodged with the BBC about Edwards and he was warned about his online behaviour.
More recently, professional dancers on Strictly Come Dancing have been accused of bullying and harassment while, in August, the former footballer Jermaine Jenas was sacked as a presenter of The One Show after a female colleague complained about his conduct.
But however badly the BBC may, so far, have handled the complaints against Wallace, the corporation is not to blame for his alleged behaviour.
That’s all on him.
Wallace is another powerful man whose ego is out of control. We men may not all be like Wallace but we all know men like him.
And, if we’re brutally honest with ourselves, we can understand how those men thrive. We have watched them abuse their power at office parties, we have seen them hold court in the pub where their ‘jokes’ always come at the expense of another.
If women like Aasmah Mir, presenter Kirsty Wark, and others of ‘a certain age’ had not spoken up, I wonder whether any man would ever have challenged Wallace’s behaviour. My experience says it’s not at all certain any would.
Over recent years, ‘middle class women of a certain age’ have been on the front line in the war against misogyny.
They are among the fiercest warriors defending women’s rights against the ideologues who believe that men who identify as women should be given access to single-sex safe spaces.
It has been interesting – if rather disheartening – to see the reaction of some ‘progressive’ men to the revelations about Wallace.
There have been great declarations of allyship with ‘middle class women of a certain age’ in recent days.
But few of these virtue-signalling men had anything to say, previously, when those same women were being denounced as bigots for wishing to protect women-only spaces.
Derision
A statement from Scottish comedy writer and director Armando Iannucci, for example – ‘Today, we are ALL middle class women of a certain age’ – was greeted with derision by feminist campaigners who wondered where he’d been during recent years when they were relentlessly abused for being who they are.
The case of the complaints against Gregg Wallace provides an opportunity for men to flex their moral superiority.
It allows us to say that we’re not like him, that we’re better, more thoughtful, more empathetic. And that may, in most cases, be entirely accurate.
But it was not men who acted when Gregg Wallace’s alleged behaviour needed to be challenged, was it? It wasn’t men who took on a powerful, highly paid man.
Rather, when a problem was identified, it was ‘middle class women of a certain age’ who stepped up.
Isn’t that so often the case?