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Shut your cake hole: Gregg Wallace has been force-fed to the nation for too long
If you were careless with the remote control during the winter lockdown, you might have been subjected to entire evenings of Gregg Wallace-presented programming.
On early evening ITV, the shouty pudding-shoveller was sunning his squeaky-smooth head on ITV’s South Africa with Gregg Wallace. Flick to BBC Two and he’d popped a hairnet on said head for Inside the Factory. Come 9pm, he was yelling his way around the world on Channel 5’s Big Weekends with Gregg Wallace.
Throw in the odd MasterChef rerun on W channel and it was wall-to-wall Wallacevision. Non-stop Gregg-o-rama. But who actually wants this much Gregg Wallace? Surely nobody. Not even any of the four (so far) Mrs Greggs.
On Monday evening, the frighteningly prolific 56-year-old returns to his main job as a judge on BBC One cookery contest MasterChef, which man-spreads across the primetime schedules with three episodes per week. As well the franchise’s mothership show, Wallace co-hosts its Professionals and Celebrity spin-offs. It all means his high-volume catchphrase, “Cooking doesn’t get tougher than this”, is in near-constant rotation.
Now he’s branched out into culinary travelogues, too. These find him noisily regurgitating facts cribbed from Wikipedia while gleefully stuffing his face, patronising locals by insistently calling them “friend” and generally bringing shame upon our once-great nation. Is there no beginning to his talents? And is there no food-related TV show that Gregg Wallace can’t ruin?
Yet somehow he’s never off the air. His gurning, grinning features currently “grace” four of the five terrestrial channels. Frankly, it wouldn’t surprise me if Wallace was announced as the next Doctor Who or new host of Mastermind.
So how did it come to this? How has such a ploddingly mediocre, widely mocked presenter become so ubiquitous? What is it that network executives see in “Gregg The Egg” - by his own admission, "just the fat, bald bloke off MasterChef who likes pudding” - to keep hiring him?
It’s partly a class thing. Food programming can feel insufferably smug and elitist. Geezer-ish, Peckham-born greengrocer-made-good Wallace, by contrast, is seen as an authentic voice. Middle-class TV execs think he's more accessible, populist and relatable than many other chefs, cooks or food critics. Unimaginative commissioning, along with a desire to capture some of MasterChef’s sizeable fanbase, means Wallace has become an obvious go-to choice for virtually every calorific gig going.
Indeed, the BBC now seems to be training up Best Home Cook’s Chris Bavin, a fellow greengrocer - sorry, “fresh produce importer” - as a sort of Gregg Mini-Me but with hair. The pair present Eat Well For Less? together and it’s a wonder the camera lenses don’t shatter from all the blokey bawling. Wallace recently stepped down from the show, citing his hectic schedule. The welfare of the production crew’s eardrums was likely a factor too.
If Wallace isn’t cooing dementedly at MasterChef dishes or roaring at a scared-looking butcher in a supermarket, he’s observing socks or cereal being made on some identikit production line - all the while bellowing, “You mean to tell me that’s how you make Quavers?” like some sort of incredulous Cockney toddler.
It’s not an act, either. Wallace appears to be an overgrown man-child off-screen as well. Legend has it that on the set of MasterChef, he asks for sparkling water by putting on a baby voice and demanding “fuzzy-wa-wa”.
When he separated from third wife Heidi after just 15 months of marriage in 2012, it emerged she’d been charged with running her needy husband’s life in micro-managed detail. His daily to-do list would include instructions to eat breakfast, brush his teeth, take his vitamins and check the BBC News website. “Then it’ll say ‘Twitter’,” explained Gregg blithely in interviews, like this was totally normal, “because I want to tweet twice a day.” Even after the couple split, Heidi would come around to his flat and change his bedsheets for him.
He’s permanently locked in a midlife crisis, trading one wife for a younger model. He got together with Heidi, 17 years his junior, when she asked him a question about asparagus on social media. He met her successor Anna, 21 years his junior, when she asked him about rhubarb. Once a greengrocer, always a greengrocer.
There’s a corner of Twitter where he’s always known as “Greg(g)” due to an unedifying 2013 exchange with a member of the public. “Hi Greg,” went the message from a Twitter user. “I am cycling just over 180 miles in 2 days for Macmillan Cancer Support. Any chance of a retweet?” Instead of saying yes, Greg(g) sulkily corrected the punter on his spelling, replying simply: “Gregg.” “No worries, mate,” shot back the charity bike-rider. “It’s only people with cancer. You worry about your extra G.”
There’s something strangely culty and comedic about him. Everyone can attempt an impersonation of Gregg Wallace, which isn’t just testament to how cartoonishly absurd he is but how much he’s seeped into the public consciousness. Morgana Robinson’s (in her underrated sketch vehicle The Agency) and Harry Enfield’s (in BBC series Walliams & Friend) were both hilariously on-the-nose.
He lends himself equally well to online memes - see 2011 viral video "Buttery Biscuit Base” and its 2013 follow-up “Flavours John”. Two years ago, he became an online laughing stock again when Instagram users noticed his habit of commenting “Great picture - print it!” underneath all his wife Anna’s posts on the photo-sharing platform. Poor Gregg just doesn’t get social media, does he? He thinks it’s the film developing counter at Boots.
Even the chemistry with his MasterChef sidekick, Australian chef and restaurateur John Torode, is oddly unconvincing. While Wallace has claimed he’s closer to Torode than anyone else and made him best man at his latest wedding, Torode embarrassed him four years ago by letting slip: "It’s funny, we’ve never been friends. We’ve not been to each other’s houses.” Torode was duly reprimanded by BBC bosses for ruining the magic of TV.
There’s also an increasing suspicion that Wallace has reached the end of his limited knowledge - something especially apparent on MasterChef: The Professionals, where he’s accompanied by decorated chefs Monica Galetti and Marcus Wareing.
Rather than offering expert critiques, he’s often reduced to just calling out what he tastes. “First you get the mushrooms, then the beef and - BOOM! - in comes the kick of fennel, finished off with buttery pastry.” It’s like a delivery driver shouting your Ocado order through the letterbox.
When Wallace first joined the MasterChef franchise after its shiny 2005 reboot, he was billed as an “artisan greengrocer”. This was later changed to “ingredients expert”. For a short period in between, though, he was simply captioned: “Gregg Wallace: diner.” That’s about the size of it. They might as well have called him “Gregg Wallace: mammal”.
He’s just a bloke who eats a lot and has loud opinions about it. He has neither the easy charm nor the specialist expertise to be on our screens this much, especially when he’s allowed to escape the MasterChef kitchen. His dubious appeal rests on being an everyman but he’s becoming less of one with every cushy commission. Don't even get us started on his habit of posing for topless selfies to show off his four-stone weight loss. It's an admirable achievement, Gregg, but please put it away.
With his booking agent seemingly unable to form the word “No”, Wallace has become badly over-exposed. He hasn't just slimmed down physically. Work-wise, he's stretched thinner than a strand of linguine. It’s beginning to feel like the nation is forced to dine with him every night. Bestriding the airwaves like he looms greedily over a “grade plade-a-food” on MasterChef, Wallace is putting us off our supper and giving us a headache into the bargain.
The only people busier than the garrulous TV glutton during lockdown have been key workers, online wine merchants and Joe Wicks. Gregg-with-two-Gs has earned a holiday. And preferably not another televised one.
MasterChef returns to BBC One at 9pm on Monday March 1
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There’s a corner of Twitter where he’s always known as “Greg(g)” due to an unedifying 2013 exchange with a member of the public. “Hi Greg,” went the message from a Twitter user. “I am cycling just over 180 miles in 2 days for Macmillan Cancer Support. Any chance of a retweet?” Instead of saying yes, Greg(g) sulkily corrected the punter on his spelling, replying simply: “Gregg.” “No worries, mate,” shot back the charity bike-rider. “It’s only people with cancer. You worry about your extra G.”
There’s something strangely culty and comedic about him. Everyone can attempt an impersonation of Gregg Wallace, which isn’t just testament to how cartoonishly absurd he is but how much he’s seeped into the public consciousness. Morgana Robinson’s (in her underrated sketch vehicle The Agency) and Harry Enfield’s (in BBC series Walliams & Friend) were both hilariously on-the-nose.
He lends himself equally well to online memes - see 2011 viral video "Buttery Biscuit Base” and its 2013 follow-up “Flavours John”. Two years ago, he became an online laughing stock again when Instagram users noticed his habit of commenting “Great picture - print it!” underneath all his wife Anna’s posts on the photo-sharing platform. Poor Gregg just doesn’t get social media, does he? He thinks it’s the film developing counter at Boots.
Even the chemistry with his MasterChef sidekick, Australian chef and restaurateur John Torode, is oddly unconvincing. While Wallace has claimed he’s closer to Torode than anyone else and made him best man at his latest wedding, Torode embarrassed him four years ago by letting slip: "It’s funny, we’ve never been friends. We’ve not been to each other’s houses.” Torode was duly reprimanded by BBC bosses for ruining the magic of TV.
