Restaurant critic Grace Dent will replace Gregg Wallace in the next series of the BBC’s Celebrity MasterChef programme, it has been announced.
Dent, who wrote a column for the Evening Standard from 2011 to 2017 and is a restaurant critic for the Guardian, will judge the 20th series of the show alongside regular presenter John Torode.
Wallace, 60, stepped aside from the show in November amid an external review into sexual misconduct allegations.
His lawyers have said it is entirely false that he engages in behaviour of a sexually harassing nature.
Dent, 51, has appeared regularly as a guest on the show and participated in MasterChef: Battle Of The Critics last year.
She also hosts the Comfort Eating podcast where she discusses food with celebrities.
“I've been watching MasterChef since I was a girl sitting with my dad on the sofa,” Dent said of her new role. “My whole family watches it. It's all about uncovering and championing talent — and to have ended up in this position, is more than a dream to me.”
“I'm so excited that I can't eat, which is severely detrimental to a restaurant critic. I feel very lucky to be stepping in for the next Celebrity MasterChef. I can't wait to meet the fresh celebrity faces for 2025.”
Dent said in 2018 she was “almost vegan” and eats a mainly plant-based diet.
“The truth is I love animals more than I love most humans,” she wrote in the Guardian.
Born in Aldershot, Hampshire, she was raised in a suburb of Carlisle in north England and said she “grew up eating very simply”.
She wrote in the Guardian in 2022 that a classic dinner in the Dent household was “half a tin of Heinz tomato soup and some white bread toast spread with Dairylea. Absolute happiness”.
In 2011, she described the reality TV show I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! as “a puerile venture into starvation, televised constipation and animal cruelty, abbreviated by ads for Iceland £1 curries”.
However, she also admitted it was a guilty pleasure and in 2023 she appeared as a contestant on the show.
Dent left the jungle after a week due to health concerns. However, she said living in a rainforest with no phone or shelter gave her "a short, sharp glimpse into the pain some folk worldwide endure".
Dent is a feminist and has previously spoken out about sexual misconduct in the workplace. She criticised James Corden for defending Harvey Weinstein in 2017, writing about the “pushback, derision, disbelief, mud-slinging and career jeopardy that a difficult woman will face for saying ‘Not ok. And not fair.’”
Dent has not yet spoken about Wallace’s alleged behaviour.
While Dent tends to keep her personal life out of the spotlight, she has previously spoken about her partner Charles. The couple got engaged in 2021 after two years together.
