All of Gregg Wallace’s controversies revisited amid BBC MasterChef investigation

Gregg Wallace has stepped away from presenting MasterChef following historical allegations of misconduct.

The decision comes after BBC News sent a letter to the presenter’s representatives on Tuesday which outline allegations of inappropriate sexual comments.

He is being accused of making these comments by 13 different people who have worked with him across a range of TV shows over 17 years, the BBC reports.

The allegations include telling “sexualised” jokes and stories which have been described as “unacceptable and unprofessional”.

Wallace’s lawyers deny that the 60-year-old has ever engaged in sexually harassing behaviour. However, this isn’t the first time he has been involved in a controversy.

Gregg was criticised for not spending time with his son

Earlier this year, the MasterChef presenter received a lot of backlash after he described his usual Saturday routine in an interview with The Telegraph.

Gregg said that he only spends an hour and a half with his non-verbal autistic son, but plays video games in his home office for two hours.

“I like to spend time with my four-year-old son, Sid, who’s non-verbal autistic. He used to be in his own world but he’s starting to seek company and show eye contact. We’ll potter in the garden and play with our two dogs, Wally and Bella,” he said.

The 60-year-old said he spends time with Sid from 1:30pm to 3pm and then plays the video game Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia for two hours from 3pm to 5pm.

People were quick to suggest he should be putting aside more time for his son than for playing video games, but Gregg clapped back at the criticism on an Instagram Live.

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“There are just two things I want to address here with Sid. People said, ‘So you spend an hour and a half with your son, but then spend two hours on your computer.’ No – I’m with my son in the house all the time.”

“I just didn’t write down, ‘Had a tickle with Sid, playing around the living room’ – you’re not logging every minute of the day. I just logged the blocks. So, it didn’t mean that’s all I saw him that day.”

He told everyone he interacts with his son all the time as he lives with him and that was just a snapshot of one Saturday, not every single week.

“I hope that makes sense to everybody. And the other thing as well – and 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.”

He also faced backlash over his response to a charity post

Gregg was also criticised after an old X post where a man asked the TV foodie to donate money for his charity bike ride resurfaced online.

“Hi Greg I am cycling over 180 miles in two days for MacMillan Cancer Support. Any change of a RT?” the social media user Nick Holder wrote.

The 60-year-old did respond, but instead of gladly donating money to the great cause, all he did was correct the wrong spelling of his name.

“Gregg ?” he wrote. In the post, the man had accidentally spelt the MasterChef presenter’s name with one “G” instead of two.

“No worries mate, it’s only people with cancer you’re. You worry about your extra G. Mastertwat,” the cyclist replied in anger.

While @GreggAWallace is currently on @ITVChase winning money for charity, let’s not forget about the time this prick refused to help someone who was raising money for a cancer charity because they spelt his name wrong. #TheChase pic.twitter.com/jngLVwgjtl

— dan (@_DanSheed) December 3, 2017

Gregg presented a documentary about human meat

In 2023, Gregg hosted a satirical documentary called Gregg Wallace: The British Miracle Meat which was all about a fake development in the British food industry where human meat was created in a lab.

Based on a really old satirical essay called A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift that was written in 1729,  the show saw Gregg investigating a controversial new genetically engineered human meat product.

The whole thing was entirely fake, but it received so much backlash as loads of people thought it was real – and The Guardian called it “one of the best hoaxes in media history”.

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Featured image by: MasterChef UK/ YouTube