Pulling MasterChef from the air is unhinged
The Gregg Wallace scandal has taken a silly, censorious turn.
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The Gregg Wallace scandal is now raging for the sixth day in a row. Ever since allegations of inappropriate behaviour were levelled against the MasterChef star, the denunciations of him have grown ever-louder. Rather than allow the BBC and production company Banijay to investigate and let due process run its course, critics have been making all the usual, hasty calls for Something To Be Done.
This has now culminated in the announcement today that the BBC is pulling two planned MasterChef Christmas specials from the air (although the current series of MasterChef: The Professionals will still be broadcast as planned).
Labour MP Rupa Huq, who sits on the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee, has been leading the charge to cancel MasterChef. Yesterday, she told the Today programme that airing the remaining episodes would ‘send the wrong sign’ and ‘could be massively triggering’ for women.
Former Labour MP Harriet Harman agreed, telling LBC that the BBC ‘shouldn’t be airing these programmes’. She accused Wallace of being insufficiently contrite since the allegations emerged (he notoriously dismissed the complaints against him as coming solely from ‘middle-class women of a certain age’).
The demands for Wallace’s likeness to be scrubbed from the airwaves, not to mention the excitable talk about a potential mass national ‘triggering’, show that his critics are getting more than a little carried away with themselves. MasterChef, let’s not forget, is a BBC light-entertainment cookery show, not A Serbian Film or Salò. And the allegations against Wallace involve lewd, obnoxious behaviour, not crimes against humanity.
Why can’t the BBC just investigate claims such as these calmly and fairly – and with due process – rather than capitulate to calls to cleanse all vestiges of the accused from the airwaves? The Gregg Wallace scandal has taken a very silly, censorious turn indeed.
Fraser Myers is deputy editor at spiked and host of the spiked podcast. Follow him on X: @FraserMyers.
Picture from: Getty.
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