Gregg Wallace’s A Life In The Day piece for The Telegraph went viral this week, bonding thousands of Brits in bafflement and eye-rolling at the MasterChef presenter’s absolute lack of self-awareness. Unlike the now-iconic Tom Hollander version, Wallace’s went down with a cartoonish dun dun duuun. At first glance, it’s just a laugh; we can poke fun at his insufferable habits (like getting his local gym to open early so he can enjoy the sauna solo) and Partridgian verbiage.
However, on closer inspection, it’s not very funny at all. And, despite his name trending on X, much of the discourse is not really about Wallace, it’s about what Wallace represents. Because what was exposed was that, there are many men whose success, like his, is made possible by the silent labour of women around them - and yet they go unthanked and ignored.
The TV personality enjoys a daily routine that is selfish and optimised to his own needs. Working out five days a week; spending two hours playing Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia; reading for an hour first-thing in the morning. His needs are met by the women in his life, one being his wife Anna (Anne-Marie Sterpini).
Wallace explains that at 1.30PM, for just an hour and a half, he likes to spend time with his four-year-old son “Sid, who’s non-verbal autistic.”
“He used to be in his own world but he’s starting to seek company and show eye contact… I’m a much better father now I’m older, although another child isn’t something that I would have chosen at my age.”
So, who is looking after his son for the rest of the day, whilst he swims and plays video games? You guessed it, his wife. And his mother-in-law. Touching on their decision to have a child, he says: “I was always very honest with Anna, bit it's what she wanted and I love her. I just requested two things - that we had help in the house (so her mum moved in), and secondly that we had at least one week a year when we holidayed just the two of us.”
In his diary, Wallace notes that he makes dinner once a week. That’s right, a man famous for food cooks just once a week. Anna makes the rest of the meals, at midday he comes back from the gym and a long breakfast at his local Harvester to ‘lunch ready on the table’. After a long, hard day of doing exactly what he wants and living like a bachelor (despite very much not being) Wallace retires to bed at 8pm.
Throughout the detailed account of his day, he does not thank the invisible work of his wife or mother-in-law, or even his PA Helen who meets him everyday at said Harvester. No, instead he calls himself an expert in journaling, manifesting, goal-setting and self-help books. He talks about his six pack and less than 18 percent body fat. The fact is, most of us could be spending our days doing zero housework or childcare (and barely any work), if we had someone else doing all of it for us. Someone to do the unpaid graft, the difficult and mundane tasks that take us so much of life.
Probably one of the reasons Wallace's comments were so widely discussed is because this is not uncommon in heterosexual relationships. So many men are ‘successful’ in their careers because a woman is making that possible behind-the-scenes. If they had to contribute to 50% of the housework, 50% of the emotional labour in a relationship, 50% of parenting, it’s unlikely they’d have time to care about their body fat. More often than not, the women doing all of this are also going to work and having careers.
Patriarchy has lied to us. It has told us that this kind of marriage or setup is fair and balanced. It’s not. Even if it is a woman’s ‘choice’ (can it be a choice if so rooted in societal conditioning?) to do all this unpaid labour for a man, it should not be done silently. It deserves to be appreciated, recognised and even remunerated.
Chloe Laws is a writer, editor and founder of the FGRLS CLUB