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.

FFS, just when you think he can't be any worse. And apology accepted, even though it very nearly put me off my toast!🤢😂.

I think that this just sounds as though he thinks he's very funny and this is his idea of a joke. He just doesn't know what is appropriate - or when to stop with the banter.
As for him thinking he's a sexy hunk, that's just ridiculous! He's a short, not very attractive man. He's lost weight and got some muscles, but that doesn't make him attractive. Sorry Greg, you're past your prime and even in your prime you weren't sexy.

He was a MIllwall Boy at the time when they were braindead thugs and racist skinheads.

According to yesterdays piece by Michael Odell in The Times (which left me a bit "meh") he already has a therapist who thinks he is "too far up the mountain now to fail". One can only speculate about the mountain.
https://www.thetimes.com/article/ba8fb5ff-7c66-44ee-a10c-3d5e2d2e4469

My dad is a curmudgeonly 85 year old. Very much “a women’s place is in the kitchen” type (along with some very GB News anti immigrant racism thrown in, you get the type). Even he said “what an idiot” and thought the whole thing was just wrong 😂

We met Gregg once at master chef live. We were looking at a menu and he came over and started talking to us, telling us jokes. They weren’t inappropriate just weren’t very funny 😂 we kind of smiled and laughed politely and moved on. I assume he’s had too many years of people laughing at his jokes because they have to and therefore thinks he’s actually funny 🤷🏼‍♀️

Urgh! That's put me right off my breakfast, that has.

Agreed. DH says that the trouble with GW is that he still thinks he's a cheeky barrow-boy trying to get housewives to buy his fruit and veg, and that his so called banter is something out of a 1970's stag show. He loathes him and won't watch anything he's in.

One of DH's friends worked in the food industry. He was at an industry event some years ago where GW was there as guest presenter. GW was odious according to our friend. Unfunny and 'near the knuckle ' in his presentation and very rude to other guests at the event. He's disliked him ever since.

Huge round of applause for Richard Osman and Marina Hyde on the Rest is Entertainment this morning talking about this. It’s the first item they cover and they hit every note.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-rest-is-entertainment/id1718287198?i=1000678980333

I agree, and this morning watching the news my 21 year old daughter made the same point as you - only women mature enough to not stand for it and stable enough in their own careers (which usually comes with age) are not afraid to report him - whereas there were probably loads more younger, vulnerable women who didn't for fear of a backlash which would affect their careers. He's a total creep!

Absolutely agree.
I feel like those who feel Gregg has been hard done by (and there is a few on on my FB) should listen to this episode.

Here’s a partial transcript, it’s AI generated so ignore any typos:

MH: Anyway, Gregg has dropped a number of videos since this story started coming out, and the one that came on Sunday morning, I think about 7am?

RO: I'm going to call it a PR gaffe.

MH: Wow, breaking. Okay, well, he said that all the complaints are coming from middle class women of a certain age. Okay.

So he has absolutely successfully guaranteed he will be the main character of next week as well. And okay, there's a lot to say about that particular comment, so we might as well dive in there.

RH: Well, yeah, firstly, women. Well, yes, it's largely going to be women because that's who you're making your sexualized comments and sexualized behavior to. Middle-aged, middle-class, yes, because they can afford to call you out.

And a lot of people, junior people, can't afford to call you out. And if you think that middle-aged, middle-class women are snowflakes, middle-aged, middle-class women who work in television are the least snowflakey people I've ever met in my entire life because they've grown up in a system where they've had to put up with so much bullshit over the years from so many people. These are the last people.

And the reason these things don't come out of the time is by and large, someone like this happens, they just roll their eyes and get on with their job. But now you just think, well, if you're going to bring it to us, we'll bring it to you as well.

And young people don't complain for various reasons. And do you think Kirsty Wark needs to do this? Of course not.

MH: She's doing it because of people who don't have a voice. And women, ideally, you'll never be more powerful if you are a woman and you are middle-class and middle-aged. You're at the peak of being strong and not giving any tosses, let's say.

Because really, this is why middle-class, middle-aged women are involved in all sorts of activism. And I have to say that, you know, these people are trying to, I would have thought, reach back and help the people below them through. And if those words feel familiar, I think I just stole them off of Michelle Obama.

RO: Reach back. Yeah, yeah. Another middle-aged woman.

MH: Anyway, also small side note, going to war with middle-class women of a certain age, you present MasterChef, okay? Who do you think watches you, right?

If you get rid of them, all you've got left is inside the factory.

You're not Sky Sport. Your audience is middle-aged, middle-class women, okay? So there we go.”

That’s why the BBC News investigation has been so important- the 13 complaints include some of those workers who were junior at the time and who weren’t celebs. For all some people complain about trial by media, there’s strength in numbers and knowing you are not alone against a man in a position of power

@CaveMum the point RO makes about the fact this is happening at work is so important. It's not that we're living in world where we can't say anything, it's about appropriate behaviour at work.

This was a joyous listen - 'the least snowflakey women are middle aged women who work in tv'. Spot on

@SerenityNowSerenityNow absolutely. It's a really good conversation, over 20 mins long so definitely worth everyone listening to it and Richard Osman just keeps on confirming what a good bloke he is. He even holds his hands up and says that he defended GregG after the "My perfect day" nonsense earlier this year and said that people he had spoken to said he was a good bloke, but that he totally accepts that he was wrong.

I bloody love Richard Osman. I actually listened to to the episode where he defended GW the other day ( I'm working through the back catalogue) and was surprised to hear him speak so positively of GW. I thought his 'mea culpa' today was a nice touch.

I'm coming off the Gregg threads now - just seeing his name so often is annoying me and tainting my day.

I'm even gonna have to hide the bakery thread

I think the jury is out on Richard Osman - he is saying all the right things now but he was a senior exec with the MasterChef production company (before its acquisition by the larger Banijay). Its not clear how close he was to the reality productions but his instinctive "good bloke" response to previous comments is in keeping with the company attitude to previous complainants (which saw Wallace happily gurn onward). It has some of the feel of a reverse ferret.

The idea that the company itself was not aware of Wallace's behaviour at a time when women were registering complaints unbelievable. Moreover if they were turning a blind eye to his behaviour on Masterchef its unlikely that the culture was any different on their other productions.

@Soulseeker I wouldn’t have had time to carry out full background research on every male I encountered professionally who made a throwaway remark that was inappropriate in some way (as suggested by a PP). Because this type of shit is relentless, even if it’s not all sexual
And would I waste my precious time and energy reporting every single comment from men that made me roll my eyes? Especially when it’s clear no action would be taken (as seen by the BBC)? No, I wouldn’t. Serious cases of extreme comments or behaviour, yes - but low-level, one-off comments? In all honesty, no. Because it happens all the time and generally, no one cares Certainly not the men at the top

But this "nothing will change so that exempts me from action" approach is exactly why so little changes.

You don't need to do a "full background" - you just need to ask a couple of simple questions. "Is he always like this?" "Does he talk to everyone like this" - that is all it takes to differentiate the idiot one off from the regular perve who needs a follow up IME. And yes - if we are in a position of seniority we do owe a bit of our precious time to follow up. We have a duty of care to our juniors and more vulnerable peers just like the men at the top.

As @Problemzapper 's DD says - the younger and/or more vulnerable staff should be able to trust in those of us better placed to take action and not dismiss their difficulties as just not meriting our precious time. Why on earth would men take this seriously if senior women sit back and look the other way?

Knowing some women who are middle aged and work in television is absolutely right. They aren't snowflakes. They can't be.

They also tell some toe curling stories about numerous celebrities who have over the years acted inappropriately. Not always towards women either. Some towards male members of staff as well.

One of mine friends tells stories about a now dead celebrity who everyone woman knew not to be around alone and were actively warned against and how dreadful he was in her twenties. This is someone who isn't on the public radar yet - it might well come out in time - the only reason I won't name him here is because I don't want to drop my friend in it and because he's dead it doesn't really change anything at this point.

She has other stories too though and it's thoroughly depressing. So my feeling is there's a pile more of historic stuff that is yet to come out.

She had particularly strong words about Schofield just being a really horrible man to deal with BEFORE anything came out. So Scofield had a reputation that went before him and it's unsurprising that no one came to his defence; Gregg Wallace is getting the same treatment by the looks of it - when the best man at your 4th wedding says publicly that you aren't really friends, that says rather a lot about just how many bridges you've burnt over the years.

It's the adage about "be nice to people on the way up, because you might go past them on the way back down".

My friend is weirdly not a hardened bitch as a result of it all. If anything she's gone the other way in accepting everyone as they come warts and all.

How she's put up with that over the years, I just don't know.

@C8H10N4O2 so are you saying it is up to women to change men’s behaviour?

As Harriet Harman alluded to on Woman’s Hour, thank heavens for middle-class women of a certain age who call this stuff out; because we are all waiting for men to step up and do the same!

And sleazy, sexualised comments delivered at inappropriate times in professional contexts are all about power play. The perpetrator is testing limits and effectively saying “I am big and powerful enough to break social conventions and do and say what I like, when I like”.

It’s the same impulse that entitles men to wolf-whistle and shout “cheer up love it might never happen” right through to flashing and sexual abuse and rape at the other extreme. A spectrum of intimidation.

Agree with this.

Well that might be asking a bit much, but mothers can start by teaching their boy and girl children (and anything between of course) how to behave.

I'm on the fence with this one.

He seems like a David Brent type - making stupid, crass comments that noone else actually finds funny that makes him look a bit pathetic. I certainly wouldn't have liked him as my boss.

But I'm not sure this warrants a media witch-hunt.

I just worry that this dilutes women's power to unthrone men who have done real harm to women - the al Fayed's etc of this world.

Wallace has pissed off a lot of women but has he ruined anyone's life? Isn't this more of a thing for the BBC as an employer to sort out?

Also, women seem to be great at coming out and rounding on twerps like Wallace, but where are they when women are being hounded out of their jobs for saying sex is real?

I just think there are worse problems and women should prioritise - this witch hunting is already getting a backlash.