Former MasterChef contestant Emma Phillips-Jennings claimed Gregg Wallace thrust his groin at her face three times while she was crouching down at an oven.
The MasterChef host stepped down from the BBC show last week amid claims of his behaviour from 13 people over a 17 year period. The TV presenter has also been accused of groping individuals – with more people making allegations. Wallace’s lawyers had denied the presenter engages in behaviour of a sexually harassing nature.
And now, in a fresh claim, former contestant Emma, who took part in the BBC competition in 2009, claimed Wallace also made an inappropriate sexual joke about meat while talking to her. The beauty therapist, 42, was cooking a stuffed trout dish when the incident, which was said to be edited out of the show, allegedly happened.
The star, who was 29 at the time, claimed: “Gregg asked me how I learned to cook and was it from my mother. I said, ‘No, because my mum’s Jewish and lived on a kibbutz where you have very set jobs and my dad was the chef in our family’.
“I said she hadn’t even seen raw meat until she met my father.” As soon as I said that, Gregg then said, ‘Yeeeaaaah, and he then showed her his meat’. He then thrust his groin towards me three times as I crouched down at the oven.” She added that, as it was a ‘low oven’, Gregg was near her face. She was ‘taken aback’ and was ‘so shocked’ by the incident.
Emma also claimed to The Sun that ‘no one said anything to him or pulled him up about it.’ She went on to slam the judge and called it ‘unprofessional’ and ‘disgusting’ before saying Wallace ‘had no shame’. Emma told the publication that she has never watched an episode of the competition since the alleged incident.
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The Mirror have reached out to Wallace’s reps and the BBC for comment. Last week, it was reported 13 people who had worked across five different programmes have claimed Wallace made inappropriate sexual comments. Wallace’s lawyer has said: “It is entirely false that he engages in behaviour of a sexually harassing nature”.
He apologised on Monday for claiming complaints about his behaviour came from “a handful of middle-class women of a certain age”, adding he will now “take some time out”. He said after receiving backlash for his comment: “I want to apologise for any offence that I caused with my post yesterday and any upset I may have caused to a lot of people
“I wasn’t in a good headspace when I posted it, I’ve been under a huge amount of stress, a lot of emotion, I felt very alone, under siege yesterday when I posted it. It’s obvious to me I need to take some time out, now, while this investigation is under way I hope you understand and I do hope you will accept this apology.”
