If Gregg Wallace was expecting a throng of beloved British food celebrities to rush to his defence after his sacking from the BBC, he will have been sorely disappointed. MasterChef may have hosted almost every restaurant critic in the UK, but most have been notably silent after an interval investigation upheld dozens of complaints against the self-styled cheeky chappy.
Wallace’s own efforts to defend himself saw him blame, first, ADHD/autism and then the BBC’s attitude to working-class staff for his own misdeeds, which led to fury and ridicule online. Thankfully, he wasn’t left entirely alone in his corner – Telegraph columnist William Sitwell wrote a piece saying he had “never worked in a place of such courtesy, kindness, respect and care as MasterChef”.
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Sitwell famously had a cancellation of his own. He once edited the influential Waitrose Food magazine, but was forced to resign in 2018 after writing in a bizarrely aggressive email to a freelance writer that he would like to see a series on “killing vegans, one by one”.
As the boss, Sitwell was presumably responsible for the atmosphere of “courtesy, kindness, respect and care” at Waitrose Food. What a shame it would be if he couldn’t raise them to the high standards he seems to believe Wallace presided over at MasterChef…
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