Let’s hope the latest BBC scandal finally leads to some agreements about work behaviours

Opinion

The Gregg Wallace drama once again highlights how staff and performers are treated in the making of programmes and, in particular, the imbalance of power between presenters and those they work with.

Monday night’s edition of MasterChef: The Professionals on the BBC was almost predictably normal.

There was the usual loud presenting style from former greengrocer Gregg Wallace as a sort of master of ceremonies, leaving the other judges — the real professional chefs, Monica Galetti and Marcus Wareing — very much in his shadow.

There was also some weird food — weird even by MasterChef standards. Not many at home will be trying to replicate the dessert that took one contestant to the semi-finals: pig’s blood and chocolate tart.

But the really remarkably thing about the programme was that it was broadcast at all, despite numerous complaints about Wallace’s behaviour by contestants and production staff, as well as calls from people including Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee member Rupa Huq and Phillippa Childs, head of Bectu, the broadcast technician’s union, to have the series “paused”.

Wallace has certainly been in the firing line, with Sun splashes on an almost daily basis, ranging from “Sir Rod [Stewart]: You humiliated my wife, you tubby bald bully” and “Gregg the Groper” to “Shut your cake hole Gregg” and “Boiling point” as MPs said they wanted the show pulled after six more people came forward.

The bubbling scandal even reached as far as Downing Street. The prime minister’s spokesman denounced Wallace’s “inappropriate” and “misogynistic” comments when the TV presenter dug his hole much, much deeper at the weekend, when he claimed the only people complaining were “middle-class women of a certain age”.

It really isn’t wise taking on the likes of Kirsty Wark or Kirstie Allsopp.

To show or not to show

Naturally, the ranks of the anti-BBC press made an obvious attack on the corporation for continuing to show the series, while the independent production company that makes MasterChef, Banijay UK, continues its investigation.

Interestingly, BBC News was very much at the vanguard on the story, sending a letter to Wallace’s representatives outlining allegations of inappropriate sexual comments by 13 women, ostentatiously distancing itself from the rest of the corporation.

The BBC was right to go ahead with the pre-recorded programmes. Such a competition is a big career-enhancing deal for those taking part and if it were to be “paused”, it would lose all momentum and significance, and might even eventually disappear.

That said, a word of explanation before or after might have helped. Wallace’s behaviour may ultimately shorten his career but, after all, he has not been accused of any criminal behaviour.

Equally, on Tuesday, the BBC also took the right decision to pull the Christmas specials that qualify only as mere entertainment.

Power imbalance

Has it all been a storm in a kitchen? Perhaps — compared with what has been going on in the real world.

Life in the real world during the period has covered everything from the first legislative steps towards assisted dying in the UK, the tragedies in Sudan and Ukraine, the Israel/Hezbollah ceasefire and the reigniting of civil war in Syria, quite apart from Donald Trump and Elon Musk lumbering their way towards the White House.

Whether Wallace pressed against a contestant from behind or came into the studio wearing only a sock over his genitals amount to, relatively speaking, very small potatoes indeed.

However, there is a serious issue that should not be neglected. That is how staff and performers are treated in the making of programmes and, in particular, the imbalance of power between presenters — or the talent, as they used to be known — and those they work with. Often the latter are young freelancers with an uncertain grasp on continuity of employment and a reluctance to complain.

Until recently, there has also been the marked reticence of broadcasters to inquire too deeply into what has been going on, particularly when lucrative “properties” are involved — a negligence that allowed serious abusers such as Jimmy Savile to evade exposure.

Newspapers have no reason to feel smug. Such problems have also been rife in other sectors of the media and some of the stories from the film industry and the tabloids in the old days would make anyone’s hair curl.

Changing times

Sometimes, it is argued that times have moved on and the likes of Wallace, who started as a warehouseman before becoming a successful greengrocer, have not managed to keep up with changing mores and have been left high and dry as a result.

It is not an argument that Labour veteran Harriet Harman has any truck with. Standards have not changed, she believes. Women have always felt “creeped out” by lewd and predatory words and behaviour, but older women now have the power to challenge such behaviour in a way their younger sisters could not.

Matters are complicated by the tiered nature of the broadcasting industry. Wallace, for example, is employed directly by an independent producer and it is that company that has the initial responsibility for standards and safeguarding, although commissioners such as the BBC are ultimately in charge.

In the Wallace case, the BBC’s performance would not win any awards. There were warnings 16 years ago that were ignored and the MasterChef presenter, it is believed, faced questioning by HR much more recently.

Industry consensus needed

Leaving aside the Wallace investigation, the best hope now is that work already under way at the BBC about where such personal boundaries should be drawn could lead to pan-industry agreements about how males — and it is mostly males — should behave in the work environment.

Whatever is found out about what Wallace did or did not do or say, it is difficult to see him returning to mainstream television any time soon.

A small word of comfort, of sorts, came from Giles Coren in The Times this week. About 20 years ago, Coren was up for presenting this new cookery programme, but as he left the interview, he heard a loud voice and laughter. It was Wallace. His opposition. The winning opposition.

Since then, there has been 20 years of “melodramatically raised voices, irrelevant cooking and now poor old decent, baffled, wildly out of context Gregg hung out to dry by the BBC for being nothing more or less than exactly what they were looking for”, Coren said.

Maybe 20 years on Coren will get a second chance.

Raymond Snoddy is a media consultant, national newspaper columnist and former presenter of NewsWatch on BBC News. He writes for The Media Leader on Wednesdays — bookmark his column here.