It was only a handful of “middle-class women of a certain age”. That’s how the MasterChef host Gregg Wallace originally dismissed his accusers, when allegations of sexually inappropriate behaviour first surfaced. Just a few humourless posh birds, in other words, who couldn’t take a joke from the self-styled “cheeky greengrocer” and star of a cookery show enjoyed by – well, lots of other middle-class women of a certain age, for starters.
But those jokes were apparently sexualised enough that the former Newsnight presenter Kirsty Wark, no shrinking violet, raised concerns privately with producers after appearing as a contestant on Celebrity MasterChef. Meanwhile, her fellow broadcaster Kirstie Allsopp, who recalled Wallace allegedly describing a sex act with his partner within an hour of meeting her at work, succinctly described all the reasons women mostly didn’t say anything at the time: “Because you feel, in no particular order, embarrassed, a prude, shocked, waiting for a male colleague to call him out, not wanting to ‘rock the boat’, thinking it’s better to plough on with the day, assuming you misheard/misunderstood or just don’t get the joke.”
Or, of course, because you’re frightened that if you complain you won’t get hired again – which is precisely why it’s often those pesky older women, financially secure and senior enough not to be easily brushed off, who end up making a fuss on behalf of those who can’t.
We now know that more than 50 people, in addition to the 13 who originally complained to BBC News, have come forward after an inquiry into Wallace’s conduct set up by Banijay, the production company behind MasterChef. Many were said to be young women on precarious freelance contracts, scared of losing work in a ridiculously competitive industry.
One was in her 20s when she claims Wallace pushed her on to the sofa in his dressing room and dropped his trousers; when she reported the alleged incident to senior staff, she was allegedly informed that she was over 16, so “you’re not being Jimmy Saviled”. Another alleged that Wallace put his hand on her groin under the table at a dinner ahead of filming the cookery show Saturday Kitchen, asking if she liked it. (Wallace, for his part, insists the most serious allegations against him have been dismissed; at the time of writing, the report is still unpublished.)
So far, so familiar, from all the other stories of big shots behaving badly that women are sick and tired of hearing but from which some institutions still can’t seem to learn. It’s happening from TV to politics, banking to and sport. For the avoidance of any doubt, the take-home lesson from this parade of the gropey, the sleazy and the justifiably cancelled has never been that great men – for it’s usually men – just come with baggage, like tortured latter-day artistic geniuses. More banally, it’s that people mostly do what they can get away with, and those who make a fortune for their employers or shareholders are often allowed to get away with way too much. But this particular iteration of the story comes with an unexpected twist, namely Gregg Wallace’s apparently unswerving belief that the real victim here is Gregg Wallace.
He was hired, he protested on Instagram, to be “a real person with warmth, character, rough edges and all”, and for 21 years that was the brand; only now, “in a sanitised world”, have the rough edges suddenly become a problem. (Though isn’t the point of creative industries that they move constantly with the times? How many brands wouldn’t need a refresh after two decades?) But crucially, Wallace went on to add that he was recently diagnosed as autistic, after years of speculation that he might be neurodivergent: while he admits his language was sometimes inappropriate, he is angry that the BBC apparently did nothing “to investigate my disability or protect me from what I now realise was a dangerous environment”. (Dangerous for him, presumably, rather than the women, though I do see why you might be confused.) Friends of the presenter, meanwhile, blamed his reported habit of not wearing underpants – a recurrent theme of the allegations – on “hypersensitivity to labels and tight clothing”.
As it happens, this week I read a moving interview with the England footballer Lucy Bronze, also diagnosed with autism as an adult. She spent her 20s struggling desperately to fit in, making herself “feel uncomfortable so that others felt more comfortable”, she told Women’s Health magazine: she would watch and copy her team-mate Jill Scott, teaching herself to make eye contact like the other players did even though it felt unnatural. (Even now, she finds hugging people difficult.)
Let’s just say Bronze’s story will probably resonate a lot more than Wallace’s with the many, many autistic people quietly exhausting themselves trying to decipher and comply with all the unspoken etiquette of office life – the things most people just absorb without even thinking about it – who have nonetheless managed not to be accused of sexual harassment. No autistic person needs the added stigma of being associated with trouser-dropping.
But even taking at face value Wallace’s argument that the BBC should have done more to protect him from himself, what helps most autistic people (and actually many neurotypical people) thrive at work is setting very clear rules, spelling out exactly what is and isn’t done in your organisation. As luck would have it, that kind of clarity would be an absolute godsend for the prospective victims of sexual harassment, too.
This week, the government announced that it will implement a form of Zelda’s law – named after Zelda Perkins, former PA to the rapist Harvey Weinstein – banning employers from using non-disclosure agreements to silence victims of sexual harassment. It’s a nice change from the days when the Labour party stood accused of asking its own staff to sign them, and an important step towards transparency. But for most women, it’s not a formal gagging order so much as fear of professional repercussions or a fumbled investigation that stops them speaking up.
Ultimately, there’s no substitute for managers or board members actually managing: drawing red lines around what is acceptable, and then enforcing it from top to bottom, so that everyone – no matter how senior or junior, how good or bad at reading a room – knows where they stand. Of course, it’s embarrassing having to tell someone that their smutty jokes aren’t safe for work, that their manner is terrifying, that they can’t carry on like it’s the 1980s. But it’s even more embarrassing, as the MasterChef saga illustrates, for everyone to end up this publicly in the soup.
Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
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