2 weeks Ago
A Glasgow presenter has accused Gregg Wallace of making 'inappropriate' comments towards her while she appeared on MasterChef. Times Radio host Aasmah Mir, who was born in Glasgow and grew up in Bearsden, spoke about her experience on the BBC programme Celebrity MasterChef in 2017, during which she claimed host Wallace acted inappropriately. Speaking to the Times , Mir said that when she presented her first dish to the judges, Wallace mentioned a mutual friend at Radio 4 and said: "Tell her from me, she's a sexy b****.
" She said: "He did it brazenly in front of everybody. "He obviously knew that he could say anything he wanted and he would get away with it? "My major takeaway is that he felt able to say [a sexist comment] in front of a camera crew and nobody flinched, no one said anything." Mir logged a report with the BBC in 2017 regarding the allegations.
She says it soured her experience on the show, adding: "I was really looking forward to doing something other than looking after a baby. "I went home and thought, 'that thing he said was really bad', but I thought it would look like sour grapes if I complained because I was first out. "So I left it for about five months, and then, when it was about to air on TV, I sent an email [to a Banijay executive] because I thought I must say something.
" It comes as Wallace has stepped down from presenting the popular cooking show as he faces various allegations of making “inappropriate sexual jokes”, asking for the phone numbers of female members of production staff, and undressing in front of and standing “too close” to women working on his shows. He also faces allegations of inappropriate sexual comments from 13 people across a range of shows over 17 years, as reported by BBC News, which said it sent a letter to the TV star’s representatives earlier this week. The production company has appointed law firm Lewis Silkin to investigate Wallace’s alleged behaviour.
In a post on Instagram on Sunday, the 60-year-old said: “I’ve been doing MasterChef for 20 years, amateur, celebrity and professional MasterChef, and I think, in that time, I have worked with over 4,000 contestants of all different ages, all different backgrounds, all walks of life. “Apparently now, I’m reading in the paper, there’s been 13 complaints in that time. “I can see the complaints coming from a handful of middle-class women of a certain age, just from Celebrity MasterChef.
“This isn’t right. “In 20 years, over 20 years of television, can you imagine how many women, female contestants on MasterChef, have made sexual remarks, or sexual innuendo? Can you imagine?” In another video, Wallace claimed “absolutely none” of the people he had worked with on his shows had made a complaint about him..
