Gregg Wallace responds with “A handful of comments from middle class women of a certain age”

[Conniebygaslight]

Just heard his comments on the news….unbelievable.

Its all just men crying now and women being strong.

Damn those strong women who challenge your world view! The world was much more fun when blokes could indulge in 90s lads' mag bantz and no one got offended, eh? Can't say anything nowadays! Etc. Yawn.

Well said!

but if senior figures and talent (mostly male but some female) had acted sooner then their (mostly female but some male) victims would be few instead of many. Both things are true.

Kirsty Wark raised it with the production company (Shine, at the time - 2011 I think). Emma Kennedy complained in 2012. Aasmah Mir complained in 2017.

Katy Brand also raised it and got a lot of backlash. Other complaints have been investigated and indeed, he had a 90 minute "HR meeting" with the Beeb in 2017/18-ish to tell him to behave better.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2exd7jm77wo

I do wish people wouldn't be so simplistic as to say if only This One Person had spoken up, it would have stopped, when the evidence is usually to the contrary.

See also Jimmy Saville (of course, much worse) who had various police and other investigations happen and come to nothing, but sometimes Esther Rantzen (or other named celebs) get the 'blame' for him as if they were all powerful.

Love the manwhohasitall sweatshirt. A shame that half the profits go to the Fawcett Society who believe a middle aged man is a woman if he says so.

@HazelFawn are you saying strong women and little girls are bad things?

Drat - I didn't realise they'd been captured. I'll look around to see if I can find it somewhere else. Thanks for the heads up.

Women have been complaining about him for years and the result is....he carries on with the same behaviour.
If the middle class middle age women are complaining and not seeing any changes or action, it's no wonder that younger (and less well paid/more dispensable as it were) crew/production staff might not have thought it was worth it.

The whole "why did no-one say anything" doesn't make sense. They did complain ....and nothing changed.
The question should be (as usual) why weren't the complaints properly acted upon

100% @Fizbosshoes

They won't be replying as MNHQ have just zapped and banned them.

If only it were possible to zap and ban people who utter offensive comments in real life...

have not folllowed the full list of women who have come out but Kirsty Wark is the woman I most admire in BBC journalism and was genuinely bereft when she left Newsnight! She is known to be an excellent mentor to young women in the industry
The fact GW dismissed her in this way shows me what a truly despicable human being he is and I hope he never appears on screen again ( and ideally face a criminal investigation if appropriate)

• I cannot believe the BBC have let another scandal of this type occur. The Jimmy Saville report was published in 2016 saying there should be zero tolerance - a line from the report and the later Stuart Hall scandal ‘ Both men used their fame and positions of celebrity to engage in "monstrous behaviour"

Excellent post. Thank you.

None of those women are anywhere near Allsopp in terms of wealth, power and media influence, two were employees of the commissioning company and all did raise it at the time and go through the complaints process. Notably also Allsopp's example was "working with" on a project, not "working for" or "competing for".

Women with power and influence have the same duty of care as men with power and influence. To pretend that this is minimising the behaviour of predators like Wallace is disingenuous. I would hope that Allsopp did that at the time rather than moving on and ignoring the risks to less influential people but we don't yet know.

I would see KA and KW as quite similar in influence, TBH.

But again: the point is that others made complaints, and some of the complaints led to investigations, and nothing changed. KA's complaint, if she had made it, would have been about GW being offensive in telling her about his sex life with his wife. IIRC, this happened off camera in the green room.

GW's rapist/foreplay 'joke' (which is considerably worse) is on camera IIRC, as is his racist refusal (also worse) to call MiMi Aye by her name and instead calling her 'YouYou', FFS.

Do you really think that it would have gone beyond the production company saying 'yeah, we will have a word' if KA had said something?

It could well be that at the time she may have thought that it was just a one off and decided to let it go. But hearing all of the other claims shone his behaviour in a new light and she felt she had to speak up.
We've had this at work before. A guy regularly being discovered "changing" after work and hanging out in a room naked deliberately not locking the door.
At the time I thought heck I should have knocked but after speaking to other women at work realised he was doing this a lot and spoke up.

@Gettingbysomehow that’s what I was thinking. She may have thought ‘ugh’ when he was talking about his sex life but if that was the only example of that behaviour by him when she was with him, didn’t think it was worthy of complaint. But maybe his behaviour was much more off on Masterchef so that made much more of a complete picture of what GW is really like. So not just the one offensive comment but his general manner, leering etc.

Now more information is coming out she can add to that picture.

have not folllowed the full list of women who have come out but Kirsty Wark is the woman I most admire in BBC journalism and was genuinely bereft when she left Newsnight! She is known to be an excellent mentor to young women in the industry
The fact GW dismissed her in this way shows me what a truly despicable human being he is

It's not surprising though, unfortunately. He can’t dismiss her as some empty-headed reality TV nobody trying to make a name for herself, and he doesn’t like that.

Absolutely.

I have been in a meeting with a guy who made a lewd comment about an air hostess. He didn’t work where I worked and we were probably of equal positions of power in our respective organisations.

I could have complained to the chairman, I guess, but it was one comment, then he wrapped it up. Additionally, the chairman didn’t really have power over him (again, different organisation)

Have been in many meetings with him before and since and he hasn’t done it again. I wouldn’t be alone with him, but I don’t feel I have had sufficient grounds for complaint or even a clear line on who I would raise that complaint with.

Allsopp is a star talent in her own right, has her own companies and is wealthy both in her own right (more so than Wallace) and in terms of background. She is way more influential and important in TV terms than any of the other complainants we have heard about (so far).

Yes she is in a position to do something - even if behind the scenes to get chaperones and behaviour reviews on set. I've not criticised her on this thread because I don't know the details of what she knew - my point is that she has exactly the same responsibility as her peers and execs in the industry be they male or female.

Or to put it another way - if she (as a bigger star talent than Wallace) knew what was going on but gets a free pass on that responsibility, then so does Torode and all the male execs in the production company.

Or to put it another way - if she (as a bigger star talent than Wallace) knew what was going on but gets a free pass on that responsibility, then so does Torode and all the male execs in the production company.

Again, disagree. Someone who worked with GW for weeks, months or years is in a far better place to comment and act than someone who (from the sounds of it) had one very uncomfortable interaction with him once.

If you “don’t know the details of what she knew” - perhaps you should read her interview with C4 news or something?

The boundary testing thing is just spot on. Men who do this are just seeing how far they can take it. Quite far ime if they are older, senior and in charge. Class has nothing to do with it. But nice to know that Gregg thinks standards are for proper middle class bitches etc

I've been in this position on a number of occasions and I've asked around afterward if that was the norm or if it was a bad day/exceptional situation. That is the basic minimum really.

If it has surprised others then its probably fair to suspend judgement, if I get rolling eyes, shrugs and "well you know" then I know its not something i can just shrug off - even if its client side.

I have read the interviews and they are pretty sketchy on the details - as I said I've not criticised her myself, simply made the point that Allsopp is one of the few whose influence is such that she is the bigger hitter of the two.

What I have said is that influential women have the same responsibility toward less powerful staff and peers as influential men. If you think powerful women don't have that duty of care because women than we will need to agree to disagree.

Rather strange how some seem to be trying to change this into a bit of a Kirsty Allsopp bashing thread.
I have little regard for the woman, but some people seem a little unhinged in their dislike of her.

And when you have acted upon it and reported it to the client’s SMT, what happened?