Vanessa Feltz has claimed she never set out to ‘lift the lid’ on Gregg Wallace.
The MasterChef star, 60, stepped down from the programme five months ago while complaints from 13 women about historical allegations of misconduct were investigated.
The findings, which are expected to largely find in Gregg’s favour, will be made public next month.
Vanessa, 63, was among those who spoke out when the claims were made public, saying a friend of hers had told Gregg a sexually inappropriate story in an elevator.
Gregg told the Mail: ‘Vanessa Feltz really knocked me for six. She had a story from a friend of hers who said she’d overheard me saying something sexual in a lift. I’ve always got on well with Vanessa. I’ve been on her show. We even swapped messages on social media.
‘I’m thinking, ‘Really, Vanessa, you’re weighing in with something someone else told you that I was supposed to have said in a lift? I thought you liked me’.
Vanessa Feltz has claimed she never set out to ‘lift the lid’ on Gregg Wallace
The MasterChef star, 60, stepped down from the programme five months ago while complaints from 13 women about historical allegations of misconduct were investigated
But Vanessa has now responded to Gregg, saying the friend in question was a man, not a woman, and Gregg said the remark straight to his face.
Writing in the Daily Express, Vanessa claims her friend said: ‘In the lift he suddenly described a graphic sexual act he said he had enjoyed with his girlfriend. There was a young woman in the lift. She looked shaken and I was pretty disgusted too.’
The man was a BBC producer who was tasked with collecting Gregg from the foyer at Broadcasting House and taking him to a studio when the remark was made.
Vanessa wrote: ‘Gregg, it was a he, not a she. You probably remember him. He’s a sportsman. He didn’t ‘overhear’ it, you said it to him.
‘I wasn’t searching for a story about your conduct, it found me organically. Making it public had nothing to do with me ‘not liking you’ at all.’
MailOnline has contacted representatives of Gregg Wallace for comment.
There were allegations he’d walked around the set naked with a sock on his penis doing a silly dance in front of the production team (‘Not true,’ he says), told inappropriate jokes (‘Probably true; some of what’s been said sounds like the sort of comments I’d have made’) and groped crew members (‘Absolutely not true’).
Seven years ago in 2018 Gregg was disciplined by the BBC for inappropriate behaviour while working on a quiz show.
He told a young runner on the final day of filming that he’d ‘really enjoyed working with her, she was brilliantly clever, strikingly attractive and was going to do well’.
Vanessa, 63, was among those who spoke out when the claims were made public, saying a friend of hers had told Gregg a sexually inappropriate story in an elevator
Gregg told the Mail : ‘Vanessa had a story from a friend of hers who said she’d overheard me saying something sexual in a lift. I’ve always got on well with Vanessa’
Vanessa said in response: ‘Gregg, it was a he, not a she. You probably remember him. He’s a sportsman. He didn’t ‘overhear’ it, you said it to him’
He said: ‘They said that was improper because it was a personal remark and sent me on a course on how to communicate with younger people, which just confused me even more.
‘I thought, ‘F***, I don’t have to do very much to get into a lot of trouble here.’
Gregg stopped socialising with young people. When on location, he’d order room service rather than join them for dinner or a drink.
‘It was at that point that I realised, in 2018, that I didn’t have to do a lot to get into a lot of trouble.
Talking about the aftermath, he explained: ‘My behaviours completely and utterly changed from 2018 and that’s why there are no complaints in this big investigation after 2018. It changed me completely and I never got into trouble again.
‘But the way I did it was to become a social recluse. I refused to do anything social at work, wouldn’t go to the pub with anyone, to the point where when we went out on location everybody else would go out for dinner and I would stay in my hotel room.
‘I wouldn’t socialise. I stopped any social conversations with younger people that I didn’t know very well.’
Gregg recalled: ‘There’s some really good young people at work and they’d say ‘Gregg we’re all going for a drink are you gonna come?’
‘And I’d say no I won’t come. You guys make me nervous. The sensibilities of a sixty year old man are different to 25-year-olds and you live in a complaint culture that never existed.
‘If I go out with you and I drink and offer an opinion, political or social, I’m scared you’re going to complain about me. The anxiety levels were just extraordinary.’
Wallace co-hosted Masterchef for 17 years alongside John Torode (left)
At least 13 people have made formal complaints against Wallace, with others alleging inappropriate behaviour on social media
‘They’d say, ‘But Gregg, it’s us!’ I’d say, ‘I know but you scare me – you all scare me.’
It’s now almost three months since the greengrocer-turned-television star’s career spectacularly derailed amid a flurry of claims of inappropriate behaviour during his 19-year stint as co-host of MasterChef.
It was announced the father-of-three would be stepping back from the BBC show amid an investigation into his conduct.
It later emerged that 13 individuals, including Newsnight presenter Kirsty Wark, had reportedly accused him of ‘wrong’ and ‘sexualised’ behaviour during filming across a range of shows over a 17-year period.
Three days after the announcement, the presenter landed himself in more trouble when he declared that his accusers were ‘middle-class women of a certain age’ and claimed that ‘absolutely none’ of the staff on his other shows had complained about him.
Afterwards, Gregg released a somewhat red-faced apology, stating: ‘I wasn’t in a good headspace when I posted it. I’ve been under a huge amount of stress, a lot of emotion.’
Lawyers, meanwhile, said it was entirely false that he engages in behaviour of a sexually harassing nature.
Gregg, who until that point had only faced two complaints in a 20-year career that saw him work with as many as 4,000 contestants and crew on programmes such as MasterChef, MasterChef: The Professionals and Celebrity MasterChef, was at breaking point when he posted that video on Instagram shortly after stepping down.
‘I hadn’t slept for four days. The feeling of being under attack, of isolation, of abandonment was overwhelming. Nobody from the BBC contacted me once these stories started breaking – absolutely nobody at all.
‘News channels were updating hourly with new allegations. There was a tidal wave of abuse on social media, a dozen reporters outside the gate.
‘You’re watching yourself get personally ripped apart, criticised, accused of all sorts of stuff over and over again. You’re thinking, ‘This isn’t true. It isn’t true. What’s coming next?’
