Even Gregg Wallace deserves due process

The career of MasterChef presenter Gregg Wallace is almost certainly over. He has been branded a sexual harasser in the pages of every newspaper. The calls for his sacking have become deafening, and even the British prime minister and MPs have intervened to condemn the BBC star.

The Wallace affair began with a BBC News investigation last week, which revealed 13 allegations against him of ‘inappropriate sexual comments’ over a 17-year period. Broadcaster Kirsty Wark then alleged that he made ‘sexualised’ jokes while filming a series of Celebrity MasterChef. The most serious allegations are that he ‘groped’ three women on the set of MasterChef, ‘while the cameras were rolling’ and then ‘yelled abuse’ at them. Another woman claimed he approached her in a pub, made lewd comments and squeezed her bottom. He has since stepped away from hosting MasterChef while the show’s current production company, Banijay, investigates the claims.

Since the story broke, Wallace has been making himself a difficult man to defend. Over the weekend, he responded with an ill-advised Instagram video in which he dismissed the allegations as the complaints of ‘middle-class women of a certain age’.

Wallace’s denial sparked almost as much outrage as the initial allegations themselves. #MiddleClassWomanOfACertainAge began to trend on X. Further misconduct claims were made using the hashtag. Presenter Kirsty Allsopp, for one, said Wallace’s behaviour was ‘totally unprofessional’ when they had been filming together.

Wallace’s ridiculous response is not only tin-eared, but also factually wrong. His accusers vary in age and status. Yes, some of them are high-profile female broadcasters. But others are young freelancers. We should remember that these people are in precarious employment and coming forward to complain about a high-profile presenter. It is not easy – especially when, if the accounts are correct, their complaints had previously been brushed aside by higher-ups.

However, we should also be wary about the speed at which Wallace has been cast out from public life. In the space of a week, he has gone from a mainstay of British television to a pariah. His denials have carried no weight at all in the media discussion. He has already been declared guilty in the court of public opinion. Even if every word said about him turns out to be true, this process of swift summary justice makes a mockery of due process.

Of course, those who made these complaints may well have been denied due process, too. Many of the allegations made about Wallace were ignored. If the worst of them are true, there are questions to be answered about how he maintained a high-profile career for so long. But we should not try to remedy such failings by prosecuting him via the newspapers. Trial by media is never fair for anyone.

We have become worryingly used to cancellations like these. We seem to now accept that allegations alone are enough to end someone’s career. We don’t talk about Aziz Ansari any more, whose career as a comedian and actor was put on hold for several years by ‘sexual misconduct’ allegations that basically amounted to an awkward sexual encounter.

Then there is Kevin Spacey, one of the greatest actors of his generation, who was actually exonerated in court multiple times. Despite none of the sexual-assault allegations against him being proven, Spacey has been perma-cancelled, with work reportedly drying up to the point that he can no longer pay his bills. This is the terrible legacy of #MeToo and its insistence on ‘believing’ all accusers.

The presumption of innocence and due process are not just important legal protections in court. They are also moral principles that ought to govern how we decide what is true and what is not. Whenever someone is accused of something, we should take a breath and remember that reputations are made over decades and can be destroyed in minutes. It is wrong that today’s media so easily blur the line between allegation and fact.

Whatever you think of Wallace, the speed of his cancellation should worry us all.

Luke Gittos is a spiked columnist and author. His most recent book is Human Rights – Illusory Freedom: Why We Should Repeal the Human Rights Act, which is published by Zero Books. Order it here.