Penny Lancaster has accused sacked MasterChef host Gregg Wallace of ‘body shaming women’ during her stint on the hit TV show.
The 60-year-old presenter was sensationally axed from the cookery programme this summer following an investigation into alleged misconduct spanning almost two decades.
The BBC upheld 45 complaints, including one of ‘unwanted physical contact’, just months after he dismissed his accusers as being on a ‘handful of middle-class women of a certain age’ – a statement he later apologised for.
Now Ms Lancaster, who is married to Scots rock singer Rod Stewart, 80, has revealed in her new book, Someone Like Me, that Wallace ‘unnerved’ her and other contestants from ‘day one’ when she appeared on the show in 2021.
Recalling an incident with fellow contestant and former model Melanie Sykes, 55, she tells how a conversation in the studio ‘took an unexpected nose-dive’ when he approached her cooking station and she heard him ask her: ‘Is it true that models don’t eat?’
Ms Lancaster said: ‘That’s out of order, I thought. Melanie was also taken aback, and pointed out to him that she had not been a model for twenty-five years.
‘Also, considering my own issues with my body plus the wider issues around eating disorders – anorexia and bulimia among girls in the modelling industry – it felt like a crass and ill-judged question. He was body-shaming women, plain and simple.’
She goes to explain that when TV presenter Ms Sykes came over to her station ‘for a quiet word’ she was ‘dismayed’ by his remark.
In the moment Ms Lancaster said she passed it off as Wallace being ‘clumsy – a boorish man’, but she adds: ‘I noticed whenever he approached me, any exchange always felt awkward’.
She tells readers: ‘It was hard to put my finger on it, but there was a negative energy around Wallace. It was as if he was on a mission to wind people up the wrong way, especially women.’
She said co-host John Torode ‘aways came across as far more serious and strict’ than Wallace, who had started life as a greengrocer, but she wrote: ‘it was Wallace who was to make me and the other contestants unnerved from day one’.
On one occasion she recalled how he ‘clipped’ a flower from the top of her dish and put it in his pocket before angrily throwing it on the floor after she repeatedly asked him to put it back.
She claimed she was a ‘victim of bullying and harassment’, and said: ‘I never understood Wallace’s motivation for treating me the way he did. But perhaps his comments posted on his social media in the days after the story broke gave me a better clue.’
The MasterChef frontman came under scrutiny after dozens of complaints against him were made about alleged inappropriate sexual comments and behaviour.
Ms Lancaster was one of those interviewed as part of an investigation which looked at more than 83 allegations against him, 45 of which were upheld.
Wallace strongly denied the allegations and, in social media posts last November, he dismissed the severity of the complaints saying they had come from only ‘a handful of middle-class women of a certain age’. Even Downing Street publicly denounced his comments as ‘inappropriate and misogynistic’.
Now Ms Lancaster, in her memoir, has put Wallace’s ‘outburst’ towards her down to ‘a simple recipe of old-fashioned misogyny topped off with a sprinkling of ageism.’
It was because of this, she said, she decided to raise her concerns through the ‘proper channels’.
Ms Lancaster goes on to say: ‘In the fullness of time I was approached to give evidence, and I did tell my story. In 2025, it’s sad to me that this type of behaviour still needs to be called out. I can only hope that the programme makers learn valuable lessons and put in place the excellent safeguarding procedures that I’ve experienced on other productions.’
In November 2024, the show’s production company, Banijay UK, announced that Wallace would step away from his role on MasterChef while historical allegations of misconduct were investigated.
At the time, a BBC spokesman said it took any issues raised with them ‘seriously’ and ‘any behaviour which falls below the standards expected by the BBC will not be tolerated’.
The report found that the ‘majority of the allegations against Mr Wallace (94%) related to behaviour which is said to have occurred between 2005 and 2018’, and only one allegation was substantiated after 2018.
Of the substantiated claims outlined in the report, some related to inappropriate language, being in a state of undress, and one case of unwanted physical contact.
After almost half the allegations made against him were upheld Wallace said he was ‘deeply sorry for any distress caused’ and that he ‘never set out to harm or humiliate’.
Ms Lancaster, however, states in her memoir: ‘No woman should ever go to work fearing they will be bullied or harassed, or arrive home knowing that they have been.’
Wallace’s representatives were contacted for comment.
