Former TV presenter Melanie Sykes has said working alongside Gregg Wallace on Celebrity MasterChef pushed her to decide to quit television.
Sykes, who competed on the show in 2021, alleged Wallace greeted her by asking if models eat food, which she said she found “unprofessional” and laced with “ignorance and disrespect”.
The 54-year-old told the Daily Mail she found Wallace’s conduct on set “jaw-dropping”, and that he spent a lot of time “barking orders” in a way that made her want to quit the show.
Wallace reportedly told her that appearing on his show would do a lot for her career prospects - with Sykes saying the experience helped her decide to quit TV.
“'I didn't know what to say, so I smiled and said ‘yes’, but I was really thinking, ‘Yes, you have finally helped me decide to end my television career once and for all’”, she told the publication.
The broadcaster, known as the co-host of Today with Des and Mel in the early 2000s, said she raised an informal complaint about her time on the show.
She has previously written about her experience on the show in her autobiography last year, and in a recent YouTube video said she didn’t like Wallace “being around” because of his energy.
Wallace, 60, faces allegations from 13 people across a range of shows over a 17-year period, with many others sharing their experiences in recent days. He has strongly denied any impropriety on the shows.
He was forced to apologise on Monday after claiming complaints about his conduct came from "a handful of middle-class women of a certain age", adding he will now "take some time out".
The defence had been sharply criticised, with Downing Street saying his response to the accusations was "inappropriate and misogynistic".
The BBC has so far resisted calls to pull episodes of MasterChef featuring Wallace over the allegations, with the latest installment of MasterChef: The Professionals airing as normal on Monday night.
The Corporation had been urged to send a “strong signal” and not air the remaining episodes of the season by Labour MP Rupa Huq.
Dr Huq, the MP for Ealing Central and Acton, told BBC Radio 4 Today’s programme that while Wallace had stopped presenting amid an investigation, the casual viewer would not notice much difference as pre-filmed episodes would still continue to air.
“We need to let the investigation do its work but at the same time if he’s being dangled on our screens when all this is going on – I just think at the moment maybe pause it,” she said.
But fellow Labour MP Jess Phillips said she was comfortable with MasterChef continuing to air.
She told BBC Breakfast on Tuesday: "Gregg Wallace isn't the only person on MasterChef, if it was just the Gregg Wallace show, then I could understand that you would immediately go, yeah, just take it off the air.
"But it is a launchpad for quite a lot of young chefs. It's not for me to decide what the BBC chooses to air or not."
