Jack Whitehall appeared on BBC’s The One Show on Monday and left Alex Jones looking awkward when he made a Gregg Wallace joke
Jack Whitehall was interviewed on The One Show on Monday and left host Alex Jones stunned with a Gregg Wallace joke.
Jack, 36, was on the BBC One show to plug his new Netflix Christmas special, Jack In Time For Christmas but couldn’t resist poking fun at MasterChef star Gregg’s recent ‘middle class women of a certain age’ remark and surrounding controversy.
Gregg, 60, has been embroiled in scandal in recent days after a number of people stepped forward to claim he had used inappropriate sexual language on the set of his BBC show.
Attempting to confront the allegations on Sunday, Gregg released a string of videos via Instagram Stories in which he argued those making claims against him were “a handful of middle class women of a certain age”.
In his Instagram Stories video address to fans, Gregg said: “I’ve been doing MasterChef for 20 years. Amateur, Celebrity and Professional MasterChef. And in that time, I have worked with over 4,000 contestants of all different ages, all different backgrounds, all walks of life. And apparently now, I’m reading in the paper, there’s been 13 complaints in that time. In the newspaper I can see the complaints coming from a handful of middle class women of a certain age, just from Celebrity MasterChef. This isn’t right.”
His comments sparked anger across the board, and Jack couldn’t resist quipping on live TV last night that he loves ‘middle class women of a certain age’. While speaking about his festive TV special, Jack noted Michael Buble is involved, which he said gave him the chance to ‘do something that is good to appeal to a different audience’.
Jack then added: “A demographic I think is much maligned but one that I love, but is middle class women of a certain age.” The dad-of-one then said: “I love that we’re giving this lovely gift to middle class women of a certain age.”
Hosts Roman Kemp and Alex were clearly stunned by the comedian’s joke, with Alex quickly jumping in to say: “We will move past that.”
Jack isn’t the only famous face to have waded into the Wallace drama in recent hours. During an interview on Sky News today, Stephen Fry also shared his thoughts on Wallace’s remarks over the weekend.
He told the channel it was “unbelievably foolish” of Gregg to publish the video over the weekend.
Addressing Gregg’s comment about ‘middle-aged women’, Stephen said: “It was obviously unbelievably foolish of [Gregg] to make that video over the weekend. It really showed that he simply wasn’t understanding. Even if he felt that he’d been misunderstood himself, he could surely see that there were some women there who were truly hurt and had felt not listened to, and that he should first of all address that.”
Stephen added: “I think, if by now, people who work in television, men who work in television, don’t understand that light banter is no longer something that can be aired in ways unless they’re thinking hard about is there a sort of victim or a stereotype at the root of this banter who might be hurt.
“And it’s just good manners, really. Good manners have changed. In Victorian times, certain things couldn’t be referred to or seen and it was only polite to obey this because people were sort of shocked and upset if things were not respected that they respect. And so I think we’ve all just got to realise it’s not about wokeness, it’s just about being sensitive to the atmosphere.”
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