BBC MasterChef star slams Gregg Wallace over 'something weird that happened off camera'

Gregg Wallace belittled and terrified a BBC MasterChef guest - who says off camera "something even weirder happened". Clemmie Moodie has spoken out after Gregg stepped back from the BBC show amid swirling allegations of misconduct.

"In 2014, I filmed a journalists’ special of MasterChef: The Professionals," the Sun newspaper columnist said, adding: "I emerged deeply shaken, and utterly bemused. Gregg was aggressive, mean and belittling - before sidling over, once the cameras had stopped rolling, and being charm personified.

"To use a modern term, I felt like I'd been gaslit." She said: "His behaviour was weird enough to see people from the show check in with me after to make sure I was ok. From the off, Gregg appeared to take a bizarre and instantaneous dislike to me.

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"I’d never before met him, and had never written a bad word about him. He was a man, frankly, not on my radar. Yet within minutes, I was seemingly on his." Clemmie says afterwards, a BBC staffer approached to check if she OK, whilst two of the other competitors insisted on taking her to the nearby pub.

“That was just so weird,” one told her. “I don’t know why he took such an instant dislike to you but everyone noticed it. We all felt so sorry for you - you looked utterly petrified," another told the journalist in the pub after filming had wrapped.

A No 10 spokesperson described the allegations against Wallace as “deeply concerning”. “It’s right that a thorough investigation is conducted, but this of course is one for the BBC and you will have seen their statement saying that they ‘take any issues that are raised with us seriously and we have robust processes in place’,” they said.

On Thursday MasterChef’s production company, Banijay UK, said it had launched an investigation after the BBC received complaints about Wallace’s behaviour and said the 60-year-old was “committed to fully cooperating throughout the process”.