It's sad to hear that Gregg Wallace felt suicidal after what he called a “handful of middle class women of a certain age” came forward with complaints about his conduct. He is right to be surprised that I added my contribution to the torrent.
I was surprised myself. I don’t know Gregg well, but he’d been an affable guest on my radio show, and we’d bumped into each other on This Morning.
I thought I had nothing to add to the testimonies against him until I spoke to a former male colleague and friend I have trusted for 15 years, and mentioned Kirstie Allsopp’s claim that Wallace had described a sexual act he had enjoyed with his wife to the horror of his captive audience. Wallace has said of the claims “they’re not all true.”
My colleague said: “That’s exactly what happened to me when I was a producer at the BBC. I was asked to collect Gregg Wallace from the foyer at Broadcasting House and escort him to the studio.
“In the lift he suddenly described a graphic sexual act he said he had enjoyed with his girlfriend. There was a young woman in the lift. She looked shaken and I was pretty disgusted too. I couldn’t say anything because I was delivering Wallace to participate in a show and there’d have been hell to pay if I’d upset him on the way.”
My friend gave chapter, verse, dates and echoed what Kirstie Allsopp had said.
Now Gregg Wallace says aggrievedly: “Vanessa Feltz had a story from a friend of hers saying she overheard me saying something in a lift.”
Gregg, it was a he, not a she. You probably remember him. He’s a sportsman. He didn’t “overhear” it. You said it to him. I wasn’t searching for a story about your conduct. It found me organically. Making it public had nothing to do with “not liking you” at all.
