Hoping that Greg Wallace is forgiven, rather than cancelled

[Toodaloo1567]

Just a few concerns about this whole GW thing. Caveat: I do not condone behaviour that is illegal.

1. It does kind of look like a whole bunch of privileged TV luvvies are clamouring to denounce someone with really quite humble roots. I grew up in London and am constantly paranoid about how I come across to my mainly middle class colleagues. The thing is, middle class and privileged people operate by a set of unwritten rules. It’s like a full time job in itself trying to emulate their way of interacting, lest you be called out for not being ‘nice’ enough or doing something odd to them, like forgetting to start an email with ‘Hope you are well?’. Only, they won’t let you know to your face that you’ve accidentally been too sharp or direct, or maybe that your joke wasn’t woke enough - no, that stuff just goes straight to HR.
2. The equality act 2010 makes it the employer’s responsibility to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. Why wasn’t all this lewd stuff dealt with? GW said that no one had made a formal complaint. Again, it makes me wonder whether the middle class luvvies just didn’t want to call things out at the time because it’s ‘beneath’ them to even consider doing something about it.
3. Even though he’s apologised, the public doesn’t think that’s good enough. It’s like only perfect people get to keep their careers. Woe betide you if you said something crass on twitter 10 years ago, or got caught speeding or something.

Of course, lots of you would want to shout me down over this, but you know what? We’re all mums here and many of us have sons. Boys and young men do and say crass things. GW hasn’t raped or systematically abused anyone. It doesn’t make what’s happened right, but I also don’t think it’s right that swarms of pitch-fork waving strangers get to play judge, jury and executioner. I’m a big fan of forgiveness. Am I the only one?

OP if you have posted here to get a feel for general public opinion about GW I think you may take away that basically no one is in a place of forgiveness. The thing is you can't walk around with your dick in a sock and expect people to see that as banter or as funny. Neither can you make lewd remarks dressed up as amusing infill whilst wandering around a TV set just because you perceive yourself to be the talent. It's not about class it's about sleaze and arrogance.

Probably because he'd had loads of messages from women on this thread going "Poor you babes, can't say anything these days #BeKind".

The only people who can forgive him for what he did are the people he did it to or who were affected by his behaviour....and I suspect that hell will freeze over first.

Reading this is reminding me of something that happened to me when I was 20. I got a job as a christmas extra delivery person for the post office and had a round in North London. Going back to the sorting office to pick up the afternoon post, one of the guys (and it was 99% men on staff) who I thought was ancient and old enough to be my granddad, asked if I got wet in the rain that morning. I said I got soaked and had to go home to change at lunch time. He replied " I would like to have seen that" with this leer on his face.

Pretty tame huh? I grew up on a council estate, have worked in newspapers, retail, travelled by myself all over the world and spent 10 years working on locked psychiatric wards. My point being, I am not a fainting flower or snowflake in the least - most people who know me will tell you I am pretty tough.

But I can still remember that moment and how horrified I felt. Fortunately it was not my career, he had no power over me and it stayed being an unpleasant moment in my life. So writing it off as "just banter" just does not do it justice.

Jimmy Saville was a miner. That is pretty working class. So OP, is Jimmy Saville excused?

This thread is like some kind of social experiment.

Wallace used the weasel word 'formal' in referring to complaints.

He damn well knows complaints were made about him.

One led to a formal warning in 2018.

Another is here:
Ulrika Jonsson also alleged that Wallace had to apologise for making a rape joke during the filming of an episode of Celebrity MasterChef in 2017.

The Swedish-born TV presenter said a fellow contestant complained about the alleged remark, and the issue was raised with the on-set management staff, according to the Daily Telegraph. Wallace later apologised with “tears in his eyes”, the paper reported. The incident was not reported to Banijay.

Then you have the next post after posting an extract detailing a sexual assault, going

'But it wasn't that bad, it was only banter'

Then you have others going

'Well they'll never prove it, it's just some woman's word against him from a incident years ago'

When you've just posted a description of an incident, in a film studio with multiple witnesses!

And there's numerous ones of these!

Now we can't PROVE any of this. It might all be rot.

However we certainly can not go 'well it definitely didn't happen, and there's no evidence or witnesses and no one reported it'.
Cos from what we can see there's reasonable questions here to be asked about what in god's name has actually happened and just how many people knew and who had the legal responsibility for that workplace over an extended period.

Clearly something has gone wrong here.

It's fascinating seeing post after posting unable to actually read literally the one or two above theirs though.

Greg.
Nice that you have made up a Mumsnet account to argue your case, as thin and flaky as an amateur pastry as it is.
It isn't about the laddish banter, ancient relic that you are, nor the tone-deaf response defending your 1970s references.
It's the fact that you don't get that a bunch of old blokes sat in a pub talking about the 18yr old barmaid is unseemly, but discrete.
But being on a major network, with a pedigree of defending paedophiles using taxpayers money, and still stroking your loaf/cucumber/moist sponge fingers...
Really? Are you that fucking ignorant?

Off you fuck OP/Greg.

I have teens a boy and a girl
I Would be ashamed if DS thought that was an acceptable way to behave , and it's depressing thinking that despite years of campaigning for equality, there is a strong chance my DD (18) will likely be subjected to it in a work place. She is shy and has social anxiety, she probably wouldn't tell anyone, let alone say anything to the perpetrator.

So it’s ok for someone to say to a woman squeamish about handling raw fish "You look like a rapist doing foreplay" as long as he's got "humble roots"? What ridiculous reverse snobbery, and how insulting to people brought up in less wealthy families.

Is it really an "unwritten rule" that no-one but "rich luvvies" knows, that when a young female production assistant is kneeling in front of you you shouldn’t grab her head, pull it towards you and simulate oral sex? Are you implying that all lower income people think that’s fine?

GW is not a "boy or a young man", and wasn’t even 20 years ago, so I don’t know what that’s got to do with anything.

I might agree with your point about forgiveness if it weren’t that he has apparently been spoken to about his vile behaviour more than once before, and clearly took no notice.

Gregg must have known all this was wrong on some level, because he was fully capable of turning that aspect of his persona off when the cameras were rolling. But he wasn't hiding it when they weren't, this wasn't stuff he was only doing/saying when alone with women.

so what is it exactly about GW that you find so appealing that he should be let off the hook for his lewd behaviour?

Men like him don’t see women as equals, they don’t see us at all, not really as humans or as people that matter.
Just see us as game for sport.

So I tend to not see men like him as anything but revolting.

Whatever you say, Gregg. 🥚

@RedToothBrush I truly do applaud your patience, especially in the disheartening wake of those posters who are determined to stick their fingers in their ears and go "lallala, just bants".

Do you not realise that they just cut the offensive parts from the televised programmes?

I actually think, while Gordon Ramsey shouts and swears, he does seem to genuinely care about people. he's all bark and no bite. he shows a lot of compassion on Kitchen Nightmares. he genuinely wants to improve their situations.

Ffs. 🤦‍♀️

It was several years ago when Amy (not her real name) was booked to do the make-up on a magazine photoshoot for MasterChef. She was excited to land the job which would add lustre to her portfolio as well as the ability to report back to her mum and dad about their favourite TV show. It was within minutes of being introduced to Wallace, as she was starting to do his make-up, that he addressed the pretty 28-year-old with a leer, “What does your boyfriend like to do to you when you f---?”

Amy froze. She had no idea how to react. In normal life, she told me she would have walked away immediately “after telling the revolting perv to shut his filthy mouth”. But this wasn’t a normal situation. Her agency was commanding a hefty fee for the photoshoot and the “revolting perv” was a BBC star on one of the corporation’s longest-running prime-time shows. A precarious freelancer, Amy couldn’t afford to lose the work. What would happen if she complained there and then about this household name?

Glancing anxiously around the photographic studio, Amy says she reckoned the crew and the staff of the magazine had a shrewd idea what was going on. “I’m sure they all knew what Gregg was like.”

Amy brushed powder on Wallace’s Humpty Dumpty head, her cheeks burning, while he entertained himself by saying lascivious things to the young woman in his trademark Cockney barrer-boy patter. Eventually, the magazine’s picture editor came over and took Amy aside. “I’m sorry you had to go through that,” he whispered. He stuck close to Amy for the rest of the shoot. Later, the picture editor emailed Amy to repeat how sorry he was.

Who was the snowflake in this scenario?

The woman who got the fuck on with it?
Or the more senior male who apologised to her in writing after acting like a chaperone when it became apparent there was a problem?

The article continues
A celebrated ITV presenter told me he once went into a bustling make-up and wardrobe department and announced that Wallace was due to be a guest on the show. “Every woman in there either made a retching sound or booed. His behaviour is an open secret in our industry.”

But honestly it's a 'class thing, and it's an snowflake thing'.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/12/03/gregg-wallace-revolting/

It carries on further

There have been previous allegations that Wallace is the beneficiary of nervous, light-touch management. Not long ago, The Sun published a story saying he was investigated over inappropriate sexual comments to a female BBC staff member back in 2018. He was hauled into a meeting after claims he had boasted about his sex life and took his top off in front of the young woman, “mortifying” members of the production team. Wallace responded to the allegations in a huffy filmed statement. “This was investigated promptly when it happened six years ago by the BBC and the outcome of that was that I hadn’t said anything sexual. I’ll need to repeat this again. I didn’t say anything sexual. Thank you for your time.”

On several occasions, I have tried to publish stories about Wallace – regular readers may have spotted heavy hints in this column – but for a journalist to avoid ruinous libel actions you need women who are confident enough to go on the record.

It then goes on to mention the fact nestle threw him out...

It's incredibly hard to move away from the phrase:
"Everyone knew"

Again.

It has its own level of entertainment value.

Just how dim do you have to be to not see it?

@Toodaloo1567

He is neither a boy or a young man, he is 60 years old !

and even if he was a boy or young man his age would not excuse his behaviour.

Forgiven for being a disgusting, crass, misogynistic pillock with no boundaries? No.

When I was 16, I was in a pub with my parents and an old man, who was some drinking buddy or other on the same table, said "Come outside, I want to tell you a joke." I followed him and once outside, he blocked the door back in and said "Are you a virgin?" and then, when I didn't answer, "Well you won't be when you go back in there". At which point I shoved him to the ground, went back inside, told my parents what he had said and nobody fucking believed me. Or they downplayed it. "He's old, he was just trying to have a laugh, he didn't mean it" blah blah blah. Dirty, filthy old git.

Assuming that Gregggg is the OP. And let’s face it, it’s possible, use social media to post up some massively tone deaf drivel expecting everyone to go ‘oh, yeah Greeeg, absolutely right mate, we’ll all pipe down now’ does seem to be his form doesn’t it. Let’s give him some themes to use for his next go.l around. We’ve had working class, bantz, shut up harpies, sorry-not-sorry. What’s next?

Brain worms. That’s good enough to get a spicy government job. Worth a punt.

Addiction. Alcohol, sex and cocaine all a bit passé. How about nutmeg or toads?

Everyone has autism or ADHD these days. BORING. I’d go for Intermittent Behaviour Disorder. Juicy.

Dementia, bit risky, hard to get back on the circuit with that one. UTI is safer

Fair enough.

If he did all those things then I agree it's obviously wrong and he deserves all that's coming to him.

Apologies I wasn't keeping up with the developments.🙏

I come from a mining background nothing more working class that this, and as you can imagine very coarse banter, but these men were also respectful to women, im sure there were bad apples as in all walks of life but it’s just not right to call it a class thing

plus I’m sorry coming from mining, working in factories and ending up with a masters and professional career it’s easy going between different worlds, 1 there not that much different and 2 if your a good normal functioning human in one sphere you can adapt to any