John Torode‘s savage comments about his co-host Gregg Wallace are resurfacing as allegations continue to emerge about the MasterChef presenter.
BBC presenter Gregg, 60, stepped down from MasterChef after it was revealed that 13 people, including Newsnight host Kirsty Wark, have accused him of ‘wrong’ and inappropriate ‘sexualised’ behaviour during filming.
The allegations emerged on Thursday and Wallace has since hit back on a video on his social media, saying the allegations came from a ‘handful of middle-class women of certain age’.
Now comments from Gregg’s co-host John Torode have emerged, where he admitted the pair have ‘never been friends’.
Since the allegations emerged, Torode has been silent about his co-host on the show which has ran on the BBC for nearly 20 years.
The show which was revived in 2005 after running for 11 years in the nineties has featured Torode and Wallace as judges for 19 series and more than 250 episodes.
The pair also co-host Celebrity Masterchef and MasterChef: The Professionals.
Torode was also the best man at Wallace’s fourth wedding in 2016.
John Torode admitted in 2017 that he and Gregg Wallace have ‘never been friends’
Since allegations were made against Gregg, his TV aide has remained silent
John Torode, 59, and Gregg Wallace, 60, have presented MasterChef together since 2005
However, speaking to The Mirror in 2017, Torode said: ‘It’s funny, we’ve never been friends. We’ve not been to each other’s houses…’
‘If we go away to somewhere like South Africa, we do things separately… If we do go out for a drink, I’ll invariably be at one end of a big old table and he’ll be at the other.’
Wallace has not stayed silent about the allegations, on Thursday, he posted a video to Instagram where he said: ‘I would like to thank all the people getting in touch, reaching out and showing their support. It’s good of you, thank you very much.’
Then earlier today, Wallace shared another video saying the allegations had come from ‘a handful of middle-class women of certain age’.
‘Now I have been doing MasterChef for 20 years, amateur, celebrity and professional MasterChef.
‘I think in that time I have worked with over 4,000 contestants of all different ages, all different backgrounds, all walks of life.
‘And apparently now, I’m reading in the paper, there has been 13 complaints in that time.
Earlier today, Gregg hit back at allegations made against him, in a video on his social media
‘In the newspaper, I can see those complaints coming from a handful of middle class women of a certain age, just from Celebrity MasterChef, this isn’t right.’
‘In over 20 years of television can you imagine how many women, female contestants on Masterchef, have made sexual remarks or sexual innuendo, can you imagine.
’20 years of doing Celebrity MasterChef, amateur, professional. Do you know how many staff complained about me, absolutely none, zero.’
Responding to Wallace’s post, Dorothy Byrne, the former head of news at Channel 4 told Sky: ‘He says that they are women of a certain age, he is a man of a certain age – the age where dinosaurs roamed this earth.
‘Does he think that young women and working class women and even very rich women want to hear rape jokes? Want to be quizzed in smutty detail about lesbian sex.
‘Does he think those young women want to have their breast stared at and hear about his sex life. No. No women want to hear that and may I say men don’t want to hear that either.’
Earlier in the week, former Celebrity MasterChef contestant Aggie McKenzie said that John Torode behaves ‘very differently’ to his Gregg Wallace.
Speaking at the Cheltenham Literary Festival earlier this year, John jibed that have sampled bountiful dishes together but that the two had never spent the time together to have developed each other’s own culinary skills
She told Times Radio: ‘I observed that when the cameras were off, they would go to separate ends of the room. They didn’t really communicate or have a connection off screen.’
Wallace has stepped back as a judge while show chiefs investigate claims from 13 people including Newsnight host Kirsty Wark, 69.
Wark, who competed in Celebrity MasterChef in 2011, claimed Wallace told stories and jokes of a ‘sexualised nature’ in front of contestants and the show’s crew.
A former staff member told the BBC that Wallace showed her topless pictures of himself and begged her for massages, while a lesbian ex-staff member of the Channel 5 show Gregg Wallace’s Big Weekends said he pressed her on the logistics of dating women.
Other ex-colleagues complained Wallace would talk openly about his sex life, with one male worker on Big Weekends alleging boasts about having threesomes with sex workers and alleging he ‘loves spanking’ several times a day.
Kirstie Allsopp took to social media to complain about the presenter’s behaviour
Singer Rod Stewart also issued a furious rant over how Wallace allegedly treated his wife Penny Lancaster
A junior female staffer on the BBC’s Eat Well for Less? claimed Wallace told her in 2019 that he wasn’t wearing any boxer shorts.
Location, Location, Location star Kirtsy Allsopp has also revealed Gregg Wallace bragged about ‘performing a sex act with his partner’ within one hour of meeting her.
Allsopp, 53, took to X, formerly known as Twitter, today to speak out about the allegations.
Using the hashtag #MiddleClassWomanOfaCertainAge, Allsopp said: ‘Within one hour of meeting Gregg Wallace he told me of a sex act that he and his partner at the time enjoyed ‘every morning’. She’d just left the room, we were filming a pilot.
‘Did he get off on how embarrassed I was? It was totally unprofessional.’
On Thursday, singer Rod Stewart also took aim at the host, over his behaviour towards his wife Penny Lancaster.
He issued a furious rant at the Masterchef presenter, calling him a ‘tubby, bald-headed, ill-mannered bully’ for ‘humiliating’ his wife when she appeared on Celebrity MasterChef in 2021.
