“I’ve been doing MasterChef for 20 years – amateur, professional and Celebrity MasterChef – and I think in that time I have worked with over 4,000 contestants of all different ages, all different backgrounds, all walks of life,” Wallace told his more than 200,000 followers.
“And apparently now, I’m reading in the paper, there’s been 13 complaints in that time.
“Now, in the newspaper I can see the complaints coming from a handful of middle-class women of a certain age just from Celebrity MasterChef. This isn’t right.”
He finished his statement by saying: “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?”
Wallace’s lawyers have strongly denied he engages in sexually harassing behaviour, while the BBC said it will “always listen if people want to make us aware of something directly”.
Responding to Wallace’s video, actress Emma Kennedy who won Celebrity MasterChef in 2012 and says she complained about his behaviour at the time, said “it doesn’t matter what the age of any woman is”.
“If you behave inappropriately, you behave inappropriately,” she told BBC News. “It’s a story as old as the tides that people who have been accused of inappropriate behaviour turn the tables on those pointing it out and try and change the narrative.”
She added: “Playing the ‘they’re having a go at me because I’m working class’ card is ridiculous.”
TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp told BBC Radio 4’s The World This Weekend about an encounter with Wallace several years ago that left her “so embarrassed”, after he “made a reference to something [he and his partner] did in bed”.
She also called Wallace’s claims on social media on Sunday “unacceptable”, adding: “He is essentially saying this is a class issue and middle-class women don’t understand the type of things he says because he’s working-class.”
Writing on X alongside a link to a BBC News article on Wallace, external, Baroness Harriet Harman said that women now “feel able to challenge” inappropriate behaviour from men.
She said that specifically “older, middle class women [are] more able to challenge than freelance junior women”, adding: “It’s our duty.”
It comes as the BBC faces fresh questions over its handling of allegations against the 60-year-old, and the fact he continued to present the cooking show, after emails emerged showing it was warned about him in 2017.
