Loose Women host Janet Street-Porter has slammed Gregg Wallace’s ‘disastrous’ response to the MasterChef scandal, and says there are many more ‘nauseating’ people working in TV
As both a TV executive and as a contestant, Loose Women star Janet Street-Porter has some history with MasterChef. She reached the final three in Celebrity MasterChef in 2013, losing out to a “boring” effort from comedian Ade Edmonson, before returning victoriously in 2020.
Janet has strong views on Gregg Wallace, most of them negative. His response to the growing scandal that has surrounded him has been “disastrous, absolutely disastrous,” she said – adding that he’s by no means the only problematic person in British TV.
“There are plenty of people like that,” she said on the Off Air with Jane and Fi podcast, “there are plenty of people who are quite nauseating to work with. But you know, we just get on with it.”
Still slightly resentful about having been denied a MasterChef win in 2013, Janet says that the dessert she invented for the final was later adopted by John Torode’s restaurant.
“I got to know John and Gregg pretty well then,” she recalled. “I already knew Gregg because he delivered vegetables to my partner’s restaurant. We knew him as Gregg the Veg from the year dot. Then I did MasterChef the second time, which was a Christmas one, which I’m very pleased to say I won.”
During her second stint on the show, Janet says she noticed “a bit of a distance” between presenters Gregg and John, adding that “they weren’t quite so pally with each other.”
The MasterChef controversy erupted late last year, after a number of people, including former Newsnight host Kirsty Wark, alleged that Gregg made inappropriate sexual comments behind-the-scenes.
After the story broke, Sir Rod Stewart weighed in with an accusation that Wallace of “humiliated” his wife Penny Lancaster on Celebrity MasterChef in 2021, and Geordie Shore star Charlotte Crosby claimed he had been “extremely unpleasant” to her when she appeared on the BBC show.
Former presenter Melanie Sykes later claimed that a “jaw-dropping” interaction with Wallace on Celebrity MasterChef had made her decide to quit TV.
In response, Wallace posted a video to Instagram suggesting that the allegations had all come from “middle-class women of a certain age”, prompting backlash from former Celebrity MasterChef contestants including Ulrika Jonsson, Kirstie Allsopp and Emma Kennedy.
Following the outcry, Wallace backtracked, apologising for any “offence” or “upset” his remarks had caused, and said he had “been under a huge amount of stress” when he posted his video.
Earlier this month, following his formal dismissal from MasterChef and the results of an investigation being published, Wallace posted another video in which he said he had been cleared of the “most serious and sensational accusations” against him, while apologising for some jokes he had made, which he accepted had been inappropriate “at times.”
He hinted that he “wouldn’t go quietly” after being axed from the show.
An allegation of racist language being used by Wallace’s co-presenter John Torode emerged at around the same time. Torode insisted that he had “no recollection” of the incident and was “shocked and saddened” by the news, adding that he knows any racially-offensive language “is wholly unacceptable in any environment”.
Both Torode and Wallace continue to deny the claims made against them, and will no longer be presenting MasterChef and Celebrity MasterChef.
But despite the recent controversies around the series – and the two hosts’ behaviour – Janet agrees that the already-shot new series featuring Gregg and John should be transmitted.
She explained: “I think the reason why it should be put out is, number one, it will be absolutely edited to remove anything that could cause offence or be construed in an unacceptable way.
“Secondly, the time and effort that the contestants put into MasterChef is tremendous. And I think that to deny them their airtime and their moment in the spotlight is cruel, because what happened was nothing to do with them.”
Janet added that the BBC has a duty to salvage as much as it can, given that the money has already been spent on shooting the episodes.
The Loose Women host admits that she made her own mistakes during her time as a TV producer: “I was a BBC executive,” she said. “I was in charge of Junior MasterChef for about five minutes till they took it off me for being slightly overbearing to the contestants.”
Janet was unwilling to go into much detail about her own personal MasterChef controversy, beyond saying that she “made some child cry because I said something about kikifruit with a pork chop.”