Have you heard the one about the greengrocer who managed to land himself a job as one of the nation’s best-loved TV cookery judges, only to get sacked for “inappropriate language and humour”? Perhaps he should grow a pear…
If you can hear boos and a heckle at the back, it’s probably because Wallace, who’s now 60 and should definitely know better, has been getting away with this kind of “unacceptable behaviour” for 20 years – and now that he’s been called out for it, seems to be using his “neurodiversity” as an excuse.
Since an initial investigation was launched in November – when Wallace was asked to stand down from hosting MasterChef – the BBC claims more than 50 people have come forward to report him for making inappropriate sexual comments, in addition to an original 13. Eleven women have also accused him of inappropriate sexual behaviour, such as groping and touching and taking his trousers down in front of them.
Wallace denies the claims – in fact, he came out swinging when the allegations first broke; blaming “middle-class women of a certain age” (now that really is funny). And this week, in a lengthy Instagram post, while he did apologise for “some” of his humour and language, he also mentioned his autism diagnosis. Sorry, is he really using his neurodivergence to try to excuse his inappropriate behaviour? Pull the other one...
Wallace says the Silkin report into his alleged misconduct, which is due to be published this week, will clear him of the “most serious and sensational allegations” against him, though he has stated: "I recognise that some of my humour and language, at times, was inappropriate. For that, I apologise without reservation.”
On Instagram, he insisted he was “never the caricature now being sold for clicks”, but was hired by the BBC and MasterChef as “the cheeky greengrocer”; a real person with warmth, character and “rough edges”. “For over two decades,” he wrote, “that authenticity was part of the brand. Now, in a sanitised world, that same personality is seen as a problem.”
But then he added a bombshell: “My neurodiversity, now formally diagnosed as autism, was suspected and discussed across countless seasons of MasterChef. Yet nothing was done to investigate my disability or protect me from what I now realise was a dangerous environment for over twenty years. That failure is now being quietly buried.”
Now, I hate to put myself anywhere near the same bracket as Wallace (and have had my own encounter with him, which I won’t go into here). But I am neurodivergent, like an estimated 15 to 20 per cent of the UK population. So are most of my family (there’s a strong genetic predisposition for autism, ADHD and dyslexia, which won’t come as any surprise to those who live with the conditions).
That’s around 13 million of us. And it grates to see what looks like Wallace blaming – or attempting to mitigate – the inappropriate language he’s admitted to on ASD.
Using “inappropriate language and humour” is no hallmark of conditions like autism or ADHD. I can honestly say that I’ve never, to date, been accused of “making lesbian jokes constantly” in the workplace, of asking probing questions about the “logistics” of someone else’s sex life or having to apologise after making a “rape joke” which caused another female contestant on Celebrity MasterChef to become “really distressed” (according to Ulrika Jonsson).
I’ve never been accused of “humiliating” anyone’s wife and being an “ill-mannered bully”, as Rod Stewart posted on Instagram in November; or of making “disgusting” sexual jokes and having to apologise to my colleagues for it. I’ve never blamed my employer on social media for failing to “protect” me or those around me… from myself.
And as a person for whom neurodivergence is part of my everyday life – at work, at home, with friends and at family gatherings – I take offence at the idea that the superpower (some call it a disability and for many it is; I simply prefer to reframe it positively) so many of us were born with is responsible for bad behaviour.
It’s not autism that caused Gregg Wallace to engage in “inappropriate language and humour” – so why mention it in the same post where you admit to it? Neurodivergence isn’t a “get out of jail free” card for people to do whatever they like and shrug off the consequences. So why is it increasingly used as an excuse? And why aren’t we calling this apparent justification out for what it really is – pulling a fast one?
While I’m not suggesting Wallace is a criminal, we’ve seen countless examples of rule-breakers trying to get a softer sentence by blaming autism or ADHD for their antisocial behaviours, even in the most serious of offences.
Hassan Sentamu, for example, who was found guilty of killing 15-year-old Croydon schoolgirl Elianne Andam in 2023 – he stabbed her in the neck after a row over a teddy bear – tried to deny murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility because he had autism. Sentamu claimed his autism spectrum disorder had caused him to “lose control” during the meeting to exchange belongings with his ex-girlfriend, who was Elianne’s friend.
In Idaho, Bryan Kohberger’s defence team have tried to remove the death penalty from the table if he is convicted in the 2022 slayings of four University of Idaho students, citing his autism spectrum disorder diagnosis – they’ve argued that executing someone with autism would constitute cruel and unusual punishment under the eighth amendment to the US constitution.
In February this year, the mother of Louis De Zoysa – a man found guilty of murdering police officer Matt Ratana – told LBC her son “is not evil” and that his actions were the result of an “autistic meltdown”.
In April last year, Mohan Babu, a GP in Havant, Hampshire, was jailed for three and a half years after sexually assaulting three vulnerable patients in his care – but not before his lawyer blamed his “autism” (the judge threw out the excuse, saying Mohan Babu was “capable of making choices regardless of autism”).
In 2021, a paedophile caught with child sex abuse images for a second time in Liverpool blamed his Asperger’s syndrome and ADHD; in 2023 an ex-RAAF intelligence officer dubbed “Australia’s worst ever paedophile” broke down in court after saying his autism was somehow responsible for hundreds of child sex offences; and in 2016, a US Tea Party activist blamed his autism and depression after pleading guilty to child sex abuse charges.
And on and on. It shouldn’t need pointing out, but demonising an entire group of people as common perpetrators of bad behaviour doesn’t help anyone. It only stigmatises us further, when the truth is that neurodivergent people know right from wrong just as well as the next neurotypical in the office (or TV studio).
In fact, most of us spend so much time “masking” (the process by which we fight hard to act “normal” around other people) that we are, in fact, hyper-aware of social norms and situations. We can find them difficult – so, we overcompensate.
As someone who knows (really knows), I just don’t buy the idea that Gregg Wallace – in the limelight for decades, a darling of quintessentially British reality TV, one of the BBC’s biggest stars – was some naif ingénue; that he had so little idea of how to behave because of his disability that he has spoken out of turn, consistently, since 2005.
Then again, perhaps Wallace had no intention of blaming his autism for his misconduct – and this was yet another example of his “inappropriate use of language”.
But I can’t help marvelling that his autism didn’t make him slip up on screen – so, why did it only disable him off camera? I’d love to hear the punchline for that…
