Moreen Simpson: Gregg Wallace has always turned my stomach – now deal with the gross Bake Off innuendo

The Gregg Wallace sexual harassment allegations hit the headlines a couple of days after my column last week.

Coincidentally, I wrote briefly about the two posties my friend and I were allocated during Christmas shifts at the Cattofield sorting office about 50 years ago. Both in their 60s, they were delighted to enjoy the company of two 20-year-olds to liven up the daily drudgery.

As a result, they were over-excited, sniggery and vied with each other to see who could come up with the best dirty joke or sexual innuendo.

How bad was it? Well, me and my pal both had furry hats, which this hilarious pair delighted in rubbing and … you get the horrible picture.

We weren’t upset. We were angry at their ludicrous behaviour. So what did we do? We started making fools of them.

As if we were their mums, we told them they were acting like overgrown schoolboys and to grow up or we’d report them to their heidie. Bald heidies bowed in humiliation, the likely laddos took their telling. Never strayed again. Worked a treat. Job done.

I’m a huge fan of the Masterchef series. Reckon I’ve watched every one since they started, including the celebrity and professional spin-offs.

Gregg Wallace is a low point of every programme

Wallace’s gurning, grinning antics are the low point of every programme. Many agree he’s a major irritant whose only qualification for being a gourmet is his old job as a greengrocer.

The way he leers at some of the contestants sends a shiver down my spine. The Beeb should have booted him after his first series.

Complaints about his alleged inappropriate behaviour and sexual harassment apparently go back as much as 17 years, including a truly shocking claim he appeared in the studio wearing only a sock – and not on his foot.

If the allegations are true, how on earth did he get away with it for so long? Why wasn’t the BBC and the production company aware of such ongoing shocking language and displays of misogyny, which must have been obvious to everyone on the set?

I’m baffled why seasoned TV presenters didn’t speak up at the time

I’m also baffled why seasoned television presenters like Kirsty Wark, Asma Meer and Kirsty Allsopp didn’t follow up on their complaints about him – asking what was happening about any investigation –  thus preventing the situation from dragging on for so long.

I also wonder why these three, and the other 10 whom Wallace so gobsmackingly crassly wrote off as “middle-class women of a certain age” didn’t actually speak to this boor of a man at the time. If so, they haven’t said.

Why didn’t they pick him up on his filthy jokes and innuendos? Tell him to quit it. Ridicule him and threaten to take it higher.

OK, maybe younger studio workers wouldn’t have dared challenge the star presenter face-to-face, but surely these celebrities had the status and power to do just that.

Unfortunately, the Gregg gadgie and his squirmy talk is not limited to Masterchef. In that other favourite food programme, The Great British Bake-Off, just about every delicious offering which comes out of the oven is at risk of some thoroughly unacceptable double entendre or sexual innuendo by one of the presenters, except Prue Leith because she’s got more dignity and sense.

A few weeks ago I complained in this column about a truly shocking, dirty comment Alison Hammond –  serial flirter – made about one of the show-stoppers. So gross that I can’t repeat it here.

Suffice to say it involved the chicken the contestant had named Fanny. Yuch. TV bosses and their staff need to get tough. Shame them. Name them. And chuck them oot asap.

Moreen Simpson is a former assistant editor of the Evening Express and The Press and Journal and started her journalism career in 1970.