A new report has upheld 45 allegations of misconduct made against Gregg Wallace.
Last November, it was announced that the MasterChef presenter had been removed from the show, following multiple accusations of inappropriate behaviour. The vast majority of allegations spanned 17 years, beginning from 2005.
For the past seven months, MasterChef producers Banijay have ordered law firm Lewis Silkin to conduct their own investigation into the accusations.
Following Wallace's official sacking from the BBC last week, Silkin’s report findings have now been released to the public.
The report has substantiated 45 out of 83 allegations made against Wallace, including claims of inappropriate language, “being in a state of undress”, and one incident of non-consensual physical contact.
The investigation heard from 78 witnesses, including 41 people who made complaints. All the report’s conclusions were linked to allegations made in connection to MasterChef.
The report concluded that 11 complaints had been officially raised about Wallace’s behaviour between 2005 and 2024. The allegations were reported to either production company Banijay or the BBC, and the majority of them were handled informally.
The report stated: “The production company undertook an investigation into an allegation in 2015 and understood the complainant was happy with the outcome. The BBC intervened in response to a complaint in 2017, following which Mr Wallace was warned of the need to change his behaviour. Mr Wallace took steps to heed that warning.”
Following the findings, the BBC has released a statement to confirm that they will not be working with Wallace in future, describing his position at the broadcaster as “untenable”.
"Although the full extent of these issues were not known at the relevant time, opportunities were missed to address this behaviour – both by the production companies running MasterChef and the BBC. We accept more could and should have been done sooner,” the BBC wrote.
The broadcaster later apologised to "everyone who has been impacted by Mr Wallace's behaviour.”
Wallace has yet to speak out about the report’s release. In a statement last week, the 60-year-old apologised “without reservation” for the use of inappropriate language. He also claimed that the Silkin’s report would clear him “of the most serious and sensational accusations”, describing them as “baseless”.
