Penny Lancaster has detailed her time on MasterChef when she felt ‘bullied’ by Gregg Wallace.
When Wallace was fired from MasterChef last year, Sir Rod Stewart shocked fans by calling out the greengrocer and accusing him of ‘bullying’ his wife, Penny.
In the post, Sir Rod wrote: ‘So Greg Wallace gets fired from MasterChef. Good riddance Wallace…
‘You humiliated my wife when she was on the show but you had that bit cut out didn’t you? You’re a tubby, bald-headed, ill-mannered bully. Karma got ya.’
Lancaster appeared on Celebrity MasterChef in 2021, making it nearly all the way to the semi-final before being booted off.
Now, in her memoir, Someone Like Me, Penny, 54, an extract seen by The Sun reveals the full ordeal on the TV show that left her shocked.
She revealed that the host stole a flower from her dish in an incident she felt was a ‘power-play’.
‘Normally, Wallace wandered around the studio with a stuck-on smile, but all I could see now was a thunderous stare.
‘Then he marched over to my station with my tray and slammed it down. “I’m the judge and I make all the decisions”, he said menacingly, before heading back.’
She added that he gave it back to her, but dropped it so she was forced to bend over and pick it up.
‘He stared at me, reached into his pocket, took out the orchid and dropped it on the floor in front of him. “There you go, there’s your flower,” he snapped.
‘Thinking about it now, I wonder why I bent down and picked it up. It was such a demeaning position to be placed in, as if his behaviour was part of a massive power-play.’
She added that it left her ‘shaking’ and she left the studio ‘in tears’ without anyone from the production team – including John Torode – coming out to find her to speak about the incident.
She recalled the moment on TV when she cried when she departed: ‘There was a very real context to those tears that was never explained to the viewer. It really did feel like no one cared.’
When her husband spoke in her defence last year, Penny appeared on Loose Women and revealed she had no idea her husband planned to leap to her defence so publicly.
‘I didn’t realise my husband had sent that post out until it was out,’ she told the panel.
‘And of course, you can imagine the influx of inquiries there were.
‘I most definitely was witness and victim to some of the bullying and harassment behaviour of Gregg Wallace and, unfortunately, a lot of those involved in the production team were also witness to that.’
The 60-year-old confirmed he was stepping away from MasterChef in 2024 amid an external review into historical allegations of sexual misconduct.
Wallace, who co-hosted the cooking competition for 20 years, was removed from the programme after an independent investigation upheld dozens of allegations about his behaviour.
The report found that 45 of the 83 complaints against him were substantiated. Wallace continues to deny the allegations.
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