For several years, my weekday mornings have followed the same routine: alarm at 6.30, check text messages, check email and then open Instagram to watch several minutes of a live Q&A with the British TV presenter and MasterChef host Gregg Wallace. Wallace has a following of more than 200,000 people, but I am part of a far smaller audience – less than 1 per cent of those – who watch these near-daily live videos. Typically only 60 or 70 people stick around to watch as he doles out repetitive and fairly obvious fitness advice, promotes his wellness brand (once ShowMe.Fit, now GreggWallace.Health) and talks about his day ahead – usually a mix of filming, exercising and travelling to mid-sized English cities for work before eagerly returning home to his wife, Anna, his young son and the Italian in-laws he also lives with in his Kent mansion.
For a man who is unavoidable on terrestrial television – beyond celebrity, professional and standard MasterChef iterations, you’ll see him on Inside the Factory, multiple travel programmes, one-off documentaries and even a mockumentary, last year’s widely heralded “hoax” The British Miracle Meat – Wallace’s eccentric Instagram presence has gone relatively unnoticed, despite him being one of the most prolific posters in British media. Beyond his Instagram Live updates, he constantly shares workouts, recipes, travel videos and a high volume of banal lifestyle content. His Instagram account became popular ostensibly because of his national fame and also his highly publicised weight loss: Wallace initially used the app to post health tips and topless photos displaying his beloved near-six-pack. It has since, however, morphed into a surreal, unpolished insight into the life of a distinctly unusual man.
This past week, a BBC News investigation accused Wallace of having for years made inappropriate, sexualised comments and behaviour on MasterChef. The allegations, which Wallace’s legal team have strenuously and categorically denied, were shocking to many – but not as shocking as Wallace’s response on social media. On Instagram, Wallace posted hourly about his innocence, seemingly sharing every supportive message he had received – be it from a former MasterChef contestant or a stranger who took a selfie with him at an event – and criticising his accusers, describing them – now infamously – as a “handful of middle-class women of certain age”. He continued to post in subsequent days, only apologising for and removing many of his comments yesterday. While this behaviour may appear erratic to those who have only encountered him on TV, it is entirely predictable if you’ve followed Wallace online. In this context, his response is emblematic of the kind of unfiltered posting his fans have come to expect from him – and even love him for.
The Gregg Wallace you encounter on Instagram is something far more uncanny than the man you see on MasterChef. On his Lives, he responds to almost every question he receives, noting the names of people who appear and comment frequently (“You’re usually the first one in!”), asking after them and their health journeys, and speaking candidly about what he likes and dislikes in his life. (Likes: big dinners, holidaying with his wife. Dislikes: irrelevant questions, bad hotels, people “choosing” to be overweight.) He replies to many and likes most comments on his grid posts, and has posted about messaging back and forth with fans in his DMs. He is rewarded for this attention: he receives constant comments about his generosity and good looks, and a stream of gratitude for his attention and health guidance.
This relationship is complemented by content that projects the same persona that viewers see on MasterChef – goofy, disarming moments, such as when he accidentally referred to his fitness brand as “ShowMe.Foot”, or when he posted a video of himself with a mixing bowl on his head, describing himself as “Edna Bowl”. The camera lingers a little too long, usually capturing a few seconds of a vacant smile before Anna (who is 20 years his junior, and whom he met when she messaged him as a fan on social media – the second wife he met this way) finally stops filming.
It’s hard to look away from such constant, unembarrassed candour – that’s why I, and many friends of mine, have watched him for years despite being far from “fans”. When Wallace’s description of his average Saturday for the Telegraph went viral in February – he admitted in print that though he enjoys spending time with his four-year-old, non-verbal autistic son, more children was not “something I would have chosen at my age” – I was initially taken aback at how surprised people were at the declaration, only remembering later that most people aren’t seeing this characteristically direct version of Wallace daily online. But the harmless jester image he cultivates on TV, combined with a potent feeling that his fans truly “know” him, is what has likely generated remarks from his defenders classing these claims of sexually inappropriate comments as merely a group of uptight women unable to handle his “dad jokes”. This cocktail of fame and familiarity also enables Wallace to see himself as both just a regular guy and, as he has described himself, a “bald king”.
Wallace’s response to these allegations has generated headlines for a number of reasons: his Trump-style combativeness, his failure to read the room, his inability to see why female celebrities are far better placed to take on a powerful man than up-and-coming chefs whose careers depend on him. But the one thing we shouldn’t feel as we watch Wallace flail online is shocked. We are witnessing the logical conclusion of the boundary-less, unfiltered version of Gregg Wallace that has always been there, posting in plain sight.
[See also: Gregg Wallace and the revenge of the middle-class, middle-aged women]
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