Penny Lancaster has branded Greg Wallace’s behaviour in opposition to her as “a easy recipe of old school misogyny topped off with a sprinkling of ageism”.
The mannequin and tv persona, 54, who’s married to musician Sir Rod Stewart, 80, makes the claims in her new autobiography Somebody Like Me, printed by Bloomsbury, and writes that her expertise on the 2021 superstar version of MasterChef when Greg was host left her in tears and feeling humiliated.
She stated: “No lady ought to ever go to work fearing they are going to be bullied or harassed, or arrive residence figuring out that they’ve been.”
Her account is a part of a chapter added after Wallace, 60, was dismissed when greater than 40 historic complaints about his behaviour had been upheld.
Penny remembers an alternate by which Greg allegedly eliminated an orchid from one in every of her dishes, which had been required to be equivalent below the competitors guidelines.
She stated he refused to return it, as a substitute approaching her cooking station on the BBC’s MasterChef with what she described as “a thunderous stare”.
She wrote: “Then he marched over to my station with my tray and slammed it down. ‘I’m the choose and I make all the choices’, he stated menacingly, earlier than heading again. By now, I used to be shaking. Everybody watched in silence and the ambiance felt insufferable.”
She added Greg later dropped the flower on the ground in entrance of her, saying: “‘There you go, there’s your flower.’ Interested by it now, I’m wondering why I bent down and picked it up. It was such a demeaning place to be positioned in, as if his behaviour was a part of an enormous power-play.”
Penny additionally remembers a second involving fellow contestant Melanie Sykes, who she claims was requested by Greg: “Is it true that fashions don’t eat?”
She stated Melanie appeared “dismayed” by the comment, and that she herself was unimpressed by what she thought of a body-shaming query.
Penny writes nobody from the manufacturing crew or Wallace’s co-presenter John Torode intervened in the course of the incidents.
She additionally criticised Banijay, the corporate behind MasterChef, claiming safeguarding measures had been unclear throughout filming below Covid-19 restrictions.
Penny stated her husband Rod supported her by means of the expertise, recalling how she felt “relieved” after her elimination.
She additionally notes Rod publicly criticised Greg on Instagram when allegations in opposition to him first surfaced, calling him a “bully”.
Elsewhere in Somebody Like Me, Penny displays on her marriage to Rod, their two kids, and a previous encounter with actor Gerard Butler.
She additionally particulars her determination to hitch the Metropolis of London Police as a particular constable in 2021.
Somebody Like Me by Penny Lancaster is out now.
