Gregg Wallace sacked from MasterChef as 50 more people make claims

Gregg Wallace has been sacked as MasterChef presenter as a result of an inquiry into alleged misconduct, BBC News understands.

It comes as 50 more people have approached the BBC with fresh claims about the TV presenter - including allegations he groped one MasterChef worker and pulled his trousers down in front of another. Wallace denies the claims.

The inquiry into allegations against him, conducted by an independent law firm on behalf of MasterChef's production company Banijay, is expected back imminently.

In a lengthy statement on Instagram on Tuesday, Wallace claimed he had been cleared by that report of "the most serious and sensational allegations" made against him.

"I recognise that some of my humour and language, at times, was inappropriate. For that, I apologise without reservation. But I was never the caricature now being sold for clicks," he wrote.

He accused BBC News of "uncorroborated tittle tattle" in its reporting.

BBC News has not seen the Banijay report.

For 20 years, Gregg Wallace has been one of the most high-profile presenters on British television and the face of BBC One cooking show MasterChef.

But he stepped aside from the show in November after our initial investigation at the end of last year, when 13 people accused him of making inappropriate sexual comments.

The new claims come from people who say they encountered him across a range of shows and settings.

While the majority say he made inappropriate sexual comments, 11 women accuse him of inappropriate sexual behaviour, such as groping and touching.

The allegations raise fresh questions for the BBC and the other companies he worked for about their safeguarding practices and duty of care.

All names have been changed for this article.

One woman, Alice, says Wallace took his trousers down in front of her in a dressing room, in what she described as "disgusting and predatory" behaviour.

Another, Sophie, says she was left feeling "absolutely horrified" and "quite sick" when he groped her.

Other people who contacted us with new claims about the presenter include:

• A participant on the BBC's Saturday Kitchen - a show at the time that was produced in-house by the BBC - who says that, during a dinner ahead of filming in 2002, Wallace put his hand under the table and onto her groin, saying: "Do you like that?"
• A university student who says she met him in a nightclub with friends in 2013. She says after she asked to take a photo with him, he reached under her skirt and grabbed and pinched her bottom
• A woman who says, at an industry ball in 2014, he put his hand up her dress and groped her
• Another junior worker, in addition to Alice, who says in 2012 he dropped his trousers in front of her and wasn't wearing underwear
• A number of men who say they witnessed Wallace making inappropriate sexual comments
• More recent claims, including a 19-year-old MasterChef worker who says she tried to complain about Wallace's comments about her body in 2022, and a former policeman who says he tried to raise concerns about Wallace's sexually inappropriate language to the BBC in 2023

Many of the women who spoke to us are young female freelancers.

They say they didn't feel able to complain about Wallace's behaviour at the time, fearing negative career repercussions.

Alice, however, told us she did raise concerns - but said they were dismissed.

She worked on MasterChef between 2011 and 2013 when she was in her 20s. At the time, the show was produced by Shine, a company now owned by Banijay.

She recalls an occasion when, she says, Wallace asked her into his dressing room, saying he needed help getting into a black-tie outfit.

He pushed her down onto a sofa, she says, pulled his trousers down and told her he wasn't wearing any underwear. Alice says she tried to avert her eyes.

She immediately reported what had happened, she says, but was told by a senior member of Shine's production team: "You're over 16, you're not being 'Jimmy Saviled'."

Alice says she felt let down by the company and was given the impression that, in a "lowly role as a production worker", she should just "be grateful and get on with it".

She has contributed to the Banijay inquiry, and says she hopes it leads to accountability.

The second woman who claims Wallace pulled his trousers down in front of her, Anna, worked on a photo shoot with him in 2012.

He took off his trousers when they were alone together in a dressing room area, she says, and she could see he was not wearing any underwear.

Anna says she looked away, but felt she could not do anything as she was holding his clothes for him to change into. She says he then got changed and she left shortly afterwards.

Throughout the shoot, as well as making lewd, sexually inappropriate comments, she says Wallace was very "touchy-feely". For instance, when she went on set to adjust the way his clothes looked, she says he would say, "Oh please do come in, I love it when you do that" and then grab her hips and squeeze her.

She says the whole experience made her feel "undermined".

Like the other women we spoke to, Anna says she felt she could not make a complaint because she was relatively junior and needed the job.

She is speaking up now because, she says, she was furious about Wallace's Instagram video last year, in which he claimed the allegations against him had come from "a handful of middle-class women of a certain age".

"Is he saying it was OK to behave that way with younger women, like I was at the time?" she says.

Sophie, another young worker on MasterChef, recalls being groped by the presenter at a wrap party at the end of the 2013 series.

At the time, the show was produced by Shine.

She says she was standing at the bar talking to Wallace and his co-host John Torode. As she was about to leave, she says: "Someone squeezed my bum, a full-handed squeeze. I turned around and it was Gregg."

It was done "covertly", Sophie says, so she doesn't think anyone else noticed, including Torode.

She says she did not pursue a complaint because she feared that being a junior member of the team, "chances were, I'd be booted off the production, and he may have only got a scalding".

Sophie has also contributed to the Banijay inquiry.

Several new allegations happened away from television - one of them in the mid-to-late 2000s in Nottingham during a book tour.

Publicist Esther describes an incident when she says Wallace pushed his way into her hotel room, took off his clothes, and then asked her: "Exactly what is it that you do?"

She says she was shocked and made it clear she was not interested, telling him: "That's not part of my job."

But rather than leaving the room, she says he climbed into her bed and fell asleep.

She didn't know what to do, she says, as she was worried that if she asked the hotel for another room, she would potentially attract negative publicity for Wallace. So she decided to sleep at the edge of the bed, with her clothes on.

When he woke up, says Esther, Wallace put his hand on her bottom and commented that she had a "nice arse". She says she told him to get out of her room, which he did.

Esther wishes she had made a formal complaint at the time, but says she did not because he was an important author, and she didn't want to rock the boat.

However, she has now contributed to the Banijay inquiry.

On Tuesday, Wallace wrote a lengthy Instagram post in which he said the "most damaging claims" against him "were found to be baseless after a full and forensic six month investigation".

"To be clear, the Silkin's Report [sic] exonerates me of all the serious allegations which made headlines last year and finds me primarily guilty of inappropriate language between 2005 and 2008."

He added: "I will not go quietly. I will not be cancelled for convenience. I was tried by media and hung out to dry well before the facts were established."

He accused the BBC of "peddling baseless and sensationalised gossip masquerading as properly corroborated stories".

In the days after BBC News published its original investigation last November, Wallace re-posted comments on social media from former MasterChef contestants who said they had positive memories of working with him.

Some readers have also been in touch with us to defend Wallace, saying his alleged comments were just "jokes" and "banter".

But others disagree.

One of the men who contacted us was a cameraman who says he witnessed Wallace asking a female worker if she had "any friends with nice tits like yours".

The cameraman worked on the BBC show Eat Well For Less in 2016. The show was produced by RDF TV, which is part of the Banijay group.

He says he heard Wallace make a string of other inappropriate comments in full earshot of the production team, including asking one female director, who was gay, about her "lesbian clothing".

"It's not banter, it's not how you should behave in a professional workplace," says the cameraman.

Sophie - who says Wallace groped her - believes the presenter has been protected for too long.

"Gregg's time has come. But the most senior leadership who have clearly heard these testimonies over the years and not chosen to remove him sooner, should also resign," she says.

"And both them and the BBC should consider why a presenter being in post is more important than the wellbeing and treatment of the people making the series."

The allegations against Wallace last year kickstarted a nationwide discussion about workplace behaviour, with the culture secretary warning there were "too many cultures of silence".

Speaking to MPs in December, Lisa Nandy warned she was "prepared to take further action" if the media industry could not address claims of misconduct.

Human rights barrister Baroness Helena Kennedy, who chairs a new watchdog aimed at improving standards of behaviour in the creative industries, has told the BBC that, for freelancers, it can be difficult to speak up.

She says they may be afraid of losing work "if they are seen as being someone who's been a complainer, or who's raised issues, especially about stars".

Baroness Kennedy also warned there had been "multiple missed opportunities" to act on bad behaviour.

• How damaging is the Gregg Wallace scandal for the BBC?

BBC News is aware of numerous occasions when complaints about Wallace were made. One, by the radio host Aasmah Mir, related to Celebrity MasterChef in 2017.

She told The Sunday Times last year that she had complained to Shine and later spoke to the BBC's Kate Phillips who was then controller for entertainment commissioning.

According to internal emails seen by the newspaper, Phillips told Wallace his behaviour had been "unacceptable and cannot continue".

Another complaint from a group of young workers just a year afterwards, concerned Wallace's time on the BBC show Impossible Celebrities, which is made by a different production company.

In a letter from 2018, seen by BBC News, Phillips wrote that she had spoken to Wallace for 90 minutes to make clear what the BBC expected of him. She confirmed in the letter that many aspects of his behaviour had been "unacceptable" and "unprofessional".

She also reassured workers on the programme that action would be taken "to prevent a similar reoccurrence and to safeguard others in the future".

But further claims in the years after Phillips’ conversation with Wallace have since emerged.

One 19-year-old MasterChef worker says she flagged concerns about Wallace's comments about her body to a more senior member of the production staff in 2022, only to be told it was "just a joke". By this date, Banijay was the company responsible for the show.

A former police officer of 30 years also told us he had tried to report concerns to the BBC after, he says, he witnessed Wallace making inappropriate sexual comments at a charity event in 2023.

The former officer says he reached out via the BBC's online complaints portal and also tried to call by phone, but never heard back.

BBC News has been told that Kate Philips was unaware of any claims prior to 2017 or any of these subsequent claims.

A recent report into the BBC found that a small number of its stars and managers "behave unacceptably" at work, and that bosses often fail to tackle them.

In response, the broadcaster said it would introduce reforms, and its chairman Samir Shah said he would draw "a line in the sand".

We have repeatedly approached Wallace for an interview but he has not responded.

In April, he gave an interview to the Daily Mail in which he said the claims against him were "not all true" and that he had felt "under attack" and contemplated suicide.

He admitted that some of the inappropriate jokes were "probably true", saying: "Some of what's been said sounds like the sort of comments I'd have made."

But he insisted he had never groped any workers, calling those claims "absolutely not true".

In response to the latest allegations, a spokesperson for Wallace said: "Gregg continues to co-operate fully with the ongoing Banijay UK review and as previously stated, denies engaging in behaviour of a sexually harassing nature."

Banijay UK said: "While the external investigation is ongoing, we won't be commenting on individual allegations. We encourage anyone wishing to raise issues or concerns to contact us in confidence."

A BBC spokesperson said: "Banijay UK instructed the law firm Lewis Silkin to run an investigation into allegations against Gregg Wallace.

"We are not going to comment until the investigation is complete and the findings are published."

Additional reporting by Insaf Abbas

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