MasterChef star Gregg Wallace has shared that he received a complaint in 2018 whilst on another show after making a joke about a drug dealer and calling someone attractive
Gregg Wallace has said he received a complaint in 2018 after making a joke about a drug dealer and calling a woman “attractive”. On 18 April, the former MasterChef star shared on an Instagram Live that he was the subject of a complaint on another show, which left him with “terrible anxiety”.
The star started by expressing his frustrations about complaints being made against him years after the offence. He said: “I don’t mind that I may have got things wrong, but it would have been helpful if people would have told me at the time, and then I could have changed. Telling me 15 years later, there’s not a lot I can do about it.”
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He then added that many complaints made about him were over a decade old and revealed that one was about a joke he made: “There was only one complaint after 2018 and that was me asking the model whether she ate much when she was modelling, and she didn’t complain.
“In 2018, they [the complaints] were all 10, 20 years old. I can’t go back and change that. I was just operating in the same way as my work environment demanded, or so I believed. So it does seem very unfair.
“I had a complaint in 2018, not on MasterChef, on another show, for calling someone attractive and telling a joke about a drug dealer. So I changed, ironically. I really changed, and suffered terrible anxiety thinking, ‘Oh, crikey, You don’t have to say much to get into trouble here.'”
Finally, Wallace added that he felt he would not have been complained about had he worked away from TV. He said: “My job was to get ramped up into a state of high excitement by the directors in the morning. You’re sharing jokes with the crew, bouncing off each other, some of them crude, like you know, everyone’s joining in, male and female, and then let loose into the audience. If our job was a desk job or working in construction, I wouldn’t have had any complaints.” The BBC declined to comment.
In 2024, Wallace addressed some of the complaints made about him in 2018. At the time, The Sun had revealed that he was accused of making inappropriate comments to a younger woman and taking his top off in front of her whilst he was on panel show Impossible Celebrities.
Wallace responded in a since deleted Instagram video that he was investigated but cleared of making sexual comments. “With reference to what’s in the newspapers, these allegations were investigated by the BBC six years ago, and my comments were found to be not sexual. I repeat not sexual. Thank you,” he said.
“Something else that I feel very strongly about, strong enough to be on here, nobody six years ago or since has accused me of flirting with anyone or hitting on anyone, and that is important to me, and I say this for my wife [Anne-Marie Sterpini], who I have been true to and madly in love with since the day I met her.”
He finished: “I don’t want anyone to misunderstand this and make it look like I was flirting with somebody. Nobody accused me of that and I never have.”
The BBC responded to the Sun‘s request for comment with: “Whilst we do not comment on individuals, if issues are raised they are dealt with swiftly and appropriately at the time. We do not tolerate any form of inappropriate behaviour and have robust processes in place.”
Since then, the TV chef was sacked from MasterChef by the BBC in July 2025 amid an investigation into his conduct on the popular cooking competition. Gregg’s departure came after an investigation substantiated over 40 complaints regarding his behaviour on MasterChef, including one instance of unwanted physical contact and three occasions of being inappropriately dressed. His co-presenter John Torode also faced dismissal following a substantiated allegation of using “an extremely offensive racist term”.
He subsequently filed proceedings at the High Court seeking damages of up to £10,000 from the BBC for purportedly causing him “distress and harassment”.
However, he dropped this in Feb, with the BBC saying: “Shortly in advance of a hearing (due 16 February), Mr Wallace discontinued his claim. He is not receiving any payment in costs or damages from either BBC or BBC Studios.”
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