‘I quit TV after my Gregg Wallace experience’ claims 90s ITV legend-Pierra Willix-Entertainment – Metro

A former TV star has revealed her experiences with Gregg Wallace led her to quit her career (Picture: BBC)

Melanie Sykes has revealed her experience with Gregg Wallace on Celebrity MasterChef led her to quit her TV career.

The model and presenter, 54, first came to prominence as the face of the Boddingtons Bitter advertisements in the mid-1990s, going on to present on programmes including The Big Breakfast, I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! and The Paul O’Grady Show.

She also fronted Today with Des and Mel with Des O’Connor and Let’s Do Lunch with Gino D’Acampo.

However, after appearing on Celebrity MasterChef in 2021, she’s not been seen on screen since.

In her autobiography, Illuminated, Melanie revealed that an exchange with Wallace, 60, resulted in her making a complaint against him.

Writing about what unfolded in the book, which was released last year, Melanie said he’d greeted her on set by asking if models eat, which she found ‘unprofessional’ and driven by ‘ignorance and disrespect with an extra helping of arrogance’.

Melanie Sykes appeared on Celebrity MasterChef in 2021 (Picture: BBC)

She also claimed he’d ‘barked orders’ in a manner that made her want to quit the series.

Melanie went on to make an informal complaint about Wallace’s behaviour on the series, adding the ‘unprofessional’ conduct on set was ‘jaw-dropping’.

The former presenter went on to elaborate about her comments in recent days, posting in a YouTube video that ‘every time Gregg came over to the desk, I didn’t really like him being around really because it’s all about vibrations and energy’.

She detailed Wallace ”barking orders’ and making ‘unprofessional’ comments (Picture: BBC)

She went on to make a complaint against him (Picture: BBC)

At the conclusion of filming Celebrity MasterChef, with other stars on her season including Katie Price, Johannes Radebe and Penny Lancaster, Melanie said she had a short conversation with Wallace that played a massive part in her decision to walk away from her TV career.

Recalling what was said, Wallace apparently advised Melanie that appearing on the BBC cooking series would help her public profile.

‘I didn’t know what to say, so I smiled and said yes, but I was really thinking, “Yes, you have finally helped me decide to end my television career once and for all”. I was done,’ she wrote.

After filming a season of her Shop Well for Less series with Joanna Page, Melanie moved to Lancashire.

Melanie hasn’t been seen on screen since 2021 (Picture: Ken McKay/ ITV/ Rex/ Shutterstock)

After 20 years at the helm of the MasterChef franchise alongside John Torode, last week it was announced Wallace was stepping down amid an investigation into his behaviour.

He is facing allegations from 13 women over a range of shows across a 17-year period, with claims he made ‘inappropriate sexual jokes’ and lewd comments, that he undressed in front of and stood ‘too close’ to women working on his shows, and that he ‘mimicked sex acts’ and walked around the studio almost ‘completely naked’.

Wallace and his lawyers have denied the allegations, saying ‘it is entirely false that he engages in behaviour of a sexually harassing nature’.

After sharing a statement on Sunday on social media, in which he claimed the accusations came from ‘middle-class women of a certain age’, Wallace later apologised and said he was ‘under stress’ when he posted it.

Metro.co.uk has contacted representatives of Gregg Wallace and Melanie Sykes for comment.

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