Wallace responded to accusations that he is an offensive sexist dinosaur in private by publicly being an offensive sexist dinosaur.
Following multiple accusations of inappropriate sexual comments by Wallace by various former Master Chef participants and production staff, Wallace thought the smartest thing to do was to publicly ridicule one group of women complaining about him.
‘handful of middle-class women of a certain age’
In a post on Instagram Wallace has dismissed the accusers by referring them as ‘handful of middle-class women of a certain age’.
He seems to forget the numerous times where there have been complaints about his behaviour going back about ten years, and where he has apologised.
So from this it seems like his defence is along the lines of it’s all a bit of banter and it’s their fault for not having a sense of humour.
He has also commented that, ‘absolutely none’ of the people he had worked with on his shows had made a complaint about him’. That would be apart from the ones that have including men who thought he was going too far with his sexist and sexualised comments.
Ladies who have stepped up to share his inappropriate sexualised comments include Kirsty Wark, Ulrika Jonnson, Aasmah Mir, Kirstie Allsopp, Emma Kennedy as well as members of the production teams over the years, including some men who recognised his behaviour as unacceptable.
Celebrity MasterChef 2012 winner Emma Kennedy mentioned that she reported Wallace’s behaviour to a member of the production team, however she did not know if an investigation was carried out.
Georgia Harding, a MasterChef producer from 2014-15, has mentioned that she reported his alleged inappropriate behaviour, but nothing was done.
In 2018 after he allegedly discussed his sex life in front of two women, making them feel uncomfortable. Following a HR investigation which found “many aspects” of his behaviour were “both unacceptable and unprofessional”, he apologised.
There have also been complaints of him asking for the phone numbers of female members of production staff, and undressing in front of them, and standing “too close” to women working on his shows.