FORMER MasterChef host Gregg Wallace has pleaded his innocence, telling The Sun in a tearful interview: “I’m not a groper, a sex pest or a flasher.”
The 60-year-old, sacked by the BBC after a , said he wanted to clear his name but is “not looking to play the victim”.
Wallace says he has been unfairly bracketed with sex offenders and , adding: “That’s so horrific.”
The ex- host spoke out in his first interview since following over several years.
He says: “There’s so much that I want to say, and so much that I want to put right, if I can.
“I’m not saying I’m not guilty of stuff, but so much has been perceived incorrectly. Things that really hurt me and hurt my family.”
Wallace - who has not been paid for this interview - adds from his home in Kent: “. People think I’ve been taking my trousers down and exposing myself - I am not a flasher.
“People think I’m a sex pest. I am not. I am not sexist or a misogynist, or any of it.
“There never were any accusations of sexual harassment.
“I have seen myself written about in the same sentence as Jimmy Savile and Huw Edwards, paedophiles and sex offenders. That is just so, so horrific.”
He adds from his sitting room, dotted with photos of wife Anna and six-year-old son Sid: “I have learnt a lot about myself over the past eight months or so, and I’m still learning.
“I know I have said things that offended people, that weren’t socially acceptable and perhaps they felt too intimidated or nervous to say anything at the time.
“I understand that now - and to anyone I have hurt, I am so sorry.
“I don’t expect anyone to have any sympathy with me but I don’t think I am a wrong ’un.”
During our interview, Wallace flips between anger and remorse, and bursts into tears when talking about the fall-out for his family.
He also backs axed MasterChef co-host , saying: “He’s not a racist.”
The report into Wallace’s conduct, from law firm Lewis Silkin, saw 45 of 83 complaints upheld. In total, 41 people complained.
I’ve worked with around 4,000 people - cast, crew, production - which means 0.5 per cent of people found fault with me
Gregg Wallace
But he says: “I’ve worked with around 4,000 people - cast, crew, production - which means 0.5 per cent of people found fault with me.
“That means in a room of 200 people, one person complained about my knob joke. It sounds a lot, but you have to consider that I don’t work in an office.”
However, Wallace does accept that this 0.5 per cent is too many. The timeline of allegations does not make for pretty reading.
One of the worst, which was upheld, was that .
Wallace claims he was attempting to flirt, recalling: “It was 15 years ago. Me, drunk, at a party, with my hand on a girl’s bum.
“This girl told me about an affair she was having with a married man who was part of the Conservative government. I can’t remember who it was.
“She gave me her phone number. I considered that to be intimacy. I was single at the time . . . well, I was dating, but I wasn’t married. Now, even in the report, it says, ‘Gregg believes this contact to be consensual’. So, listen, drag me out into the marketplace and stone me now.”
‘Jovial and crude’
Wallace is also keen to point out that he isn’t a flasher. The moment he paraded around the MasterChef studio with a sock on his willy has been heavily reported.
He says: “Yes, that’s one of the three upheld, the one with a sock on. Can I clarify what that is though? That was 18 years ago. The studio is shut, there’s no contestants.”
He said outside his dressing-room door was a sofa with four of his mates from the show on it, including .
He went on: “I was getting changed to go to a black tie event, a event. I put my bow tie on and my shirt. It’s only them outside the door. I put the sock on, opened the door, went, ‘Wahey!’ and shut the door again.
“The people interviewed were either amused or bemused. Nobody was distressed.”
He takes a dimmer view of other allegations, including claims he dropped his trousers in front of a lady named as Alice by a BBC investigation.
He rages: “That really damaged me. In the investigation, it says this person’s story is simply not credible.”
Wallace accepts he regularly got changed in front of people, and showed off his six-pack.
One of the main threads of the upheld accusations is the use of sexualised or inappropriate language. He accepts all of these - and blames his background.
It was 15 years ago. Me, drunk, at a party, with my hand on a girl’s bum
Gregg Wallace
Wallace insists: “I’m a green-grocer from Peckham.
“I thrived in Covent Garden’s Fruit and Veg Market.
“In that environment that is jovial and crude. It is learned behaviour.
“And that’s exactly the persona I brought into the workplace. Nobody ever asked me to change.
“MasterChef was a big hit. They gave me . That’s a big hit. They gave me Professional MasterChef. It’s a big hit. They gave me Eat Well for Less. They gave me Inside the Factory. I’ve got five returnable series.
“They’re all big hits, and every day I’m giving them what I think they want. It’s jokes, it’s banter.
“It’s relaxing virtually everybody I work with and we’re getting good interaction with them.”
In January Wallace was formally , and he admits he is “learning every day” about it.
He sticks by his awkward claim that his refusal to wear underwear was down to that.
Devastated by backlash
Wallace says: “I never wear pants”, before raising his short- covered leg as if to demonstrate. “I’m not wearing socks either.”
I tell him to keep his leg down. Bemused he adds: “Somehow everybody has sexualised this as well. It’s not sexualised. It’s hypersensitivity - that happens with autism.”
Autism charities have dropped him, with some saying it is not “a hall-pass for bad behaviour”. Wallace understands but has been devastated by the backlash.
Having spent two-and-a-half hours with him, I believe .
He repeatedly tells me off for interrupting - fair enough - and he is adamant we start the interview his way, which sees him nervously reading scribbled-down thoughts from scraps of paper.
I arrived at his home not expecting to like him but left liking him.
He peppers every conversation with slightly painful jokes, including: “What do you call a judge with no thumbs? Justice Fingers!”
Another sees him making a curled-finger hand gesture, asking: “What is this? A microwave!”
I know I am odd. I know I struggle to read people. I know people find me weird. Autism is a disability, a registered disability
Gregg Wallace
I’m still none the wiser. He is like a schoolboy desperate to please without being malicious.
I previously wrote about a bruising encounter on a journalists’ special of MasterChef in 2014 in which I’d accused him of making me feel deeply uncomfortable. I read out some of my criticism, saying I felt he “gas-lit” me.
Wallace appears confused as he asks me what that means. He replies after a beat: “I’m sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable.
“We were playing roles, I was playing up to it. I had no idea you felt that way, I honestly struggle to read people.
“I know I am odd. I know I struggle to read people. I know people find me weird. Autism is a , a registered disability. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not real.”
One of the claims that hurt him most - and saw him trolled mercilessly - was when Sir publicly said he had bullied his wife on Celebrity MasterChef four years ago.
He says it was not upheld, adding: “It was us having a disagreement over whether an orchid should stay in a bowl of soup.”
Sighing, he goes on: “I’m actually a Rod Stewart fan. I’ve been to see him twice. So that hurt me. Somebody like that carries a lot of weight. But there was no and no harassing.”
There was also a 2018 complaint from his time on BBC One’s Impossible Celebrities, where he told a female employee she was “very bright and very pretty” and was “rude” to the show’s production runners.
He says: “I asked for a healthy lunch and they gave me a packaged sandwich I didn’t want so I was a bit cross.”
Another complaint referred to him asking a model what she ate in a day to stay so thin. The BBC sent him on a course which was, he claims, like “telling someone with a heart condition to go and fix their own heart rate”.
I’m scared’
He adds: “They told me about how to interact with young people.
“My problem was that I saw myself the same as them, but they weren’t perceiving me the same as them. They saw me as a position of authority. So I was being too familiar and I was told I shouldn’t try to talk to them about what they might be doing at the weekend or where they’re going on holiday because I might be forcing them to converse with me on personal details that they might not want to give.
“And I didn’t know I was autistic at the time. So all that did was just confuse the living daylights out of me. So from that point on, I just stopped talking to young people because I realised that I was working in a complaints culture.
“And if I could get in serious trouble for telling a girl she was attractive, what would happen if I went out drinking with people and said something political or sexual?
“So I just stopped talking to young people. In fact, I stopped socialising on MasterChef. It just panicked me.”
From then on, there was only one allegation of inappropriate behaviour. Wallace has, he says, spent the past seven years “hiding behind my sofa reading history books”.
My biggest, biggest regret is that I ever went anywhere near a television studio - I was doing just fine as a greengrocer
Gregg Wallace
Since the scandal broke, he says he has been scared to go out “in case people, who think I’m a sex pest, abuse me in the street”.
He went on: “The first time I went to the gym afterwards I was shaking. I have been so scared. I go out now in a disguise - a baseball cap and sunglasses, I don’t want people to see me. I’m scared.”
Wallace also admits a level of guilt for what happened to his Aussie co-star John, who had an allegation of upheld .
He storms: “I’ve known John for 30 years and .
“And as evidence of that, I’ll show you the incredible diversity of the people that he has championed, MasterChef winners, over the years. There is no way that man is a racist. No way. And my sympathies go out to John because I don’t want anybody to go through what I’ve been through.”
Following the investigation, and his wife on .
He says: “We never really did get on that well.
“We’re two very, very different characters. But we made bloody good telly together for 20 years.”
Wallace says that the only positive from this is getting to spend more time with his
He admits he wished he had stayed in his former profession instead of embarking on a TV career.
He says: “My biggest, biggest regret is that I ever went anywhere near a studio - I was doing just fine as a greengrocer.”
