There’s an old maxim: when you are in a hole stop digging. It’s one MasterChef’s beleaguered host Gregg Wallacewould have done well to remember before he took to Instagram to say it was only a ‘handful of middle class women of a certain age’ who found his neanderthal sexual remarks and Benny Hill style banter offensive.
No matter that complaints about him allegedly appearing naked on set with only a sock to cover his manhood, or making racist jokes about a young Asian contestant, or letching over a young assistant’s bottom have been stacking up since 2012. Or that Newsnight’s Kirsty Wark and BBC News’ Aasmah Mir put their careers on the line to register official complaints about his ‘off colour’ jokes. And subsequently Kirstie Allsopp, not to mention Ulrika Jonsson and Penny Lancaster, have spoken up about how embarrassed and uncomfortable he made them feel.
But nope. It seems that to Gregg – a man who seems to be seriously lacking the tools of introspection – he’s just a cheeky working class chappy having some fun; he’s just misunderstood by posh, humourless midlife women. Except it’s not just us. Downing Street also waded in last week, accusing Wallace of ‘misogyny’. Wallace, who has denied any wrongdoing, eventually came back on socials saying he’d spoken against the advice of his advisors, was in a bad place and would be ‘stepping back’ from filming the programme. Hmmm.
So, why has Wallace hit such a collective nerve? Well, as the founder of a media platform and community aimed at middle-aged women, I’d say it’s because so many of us know all too well what it is like to be on the receiving end of the kind of sexist banter Wallace seems to love so much.
As a younger woman in the bear pit of newspaper newsrooms I got used to just ‘firming’ this kind of behaviour; ignoring it, pretending to laugh it off, occasionally going off to the loo to cry. The price of being in the room where the decisions were made was not being seen as ‘miss-ish’ or like you couldn’t take it. I have a large chest, for years men have talked to my breasts rather than to my face. I’ve had bosses talking about the size of their dicks, or their sexual peccadilloes. I know I’m not the only one.
‘We’re the hand-on-the-ass generation’ a senior lawyer said to me the other day. We came into an unreconstructed boys’ club of a working world in the late eighties and nineties. Often, we were the only women in the room, trailblazers. We gritted our teeth and got on with it; knowing that if we didn’t we’d get fired. And we needed the work.
But as the mother of two daughters – 19 and 22 – I don’t want the working world to be like that for them. That’s why the last time a senior man made a comment about his member to me, I called him out and made a complaint. I thought if he’s doing that to me as a senior member of his team, what is he doing to those further down the pecking order who don’t have enough power to complain? It is – I am sure – why Kirsty Wark and other senior women complained about Wallace. Middle-aged, middle-class women are the ones who are empowered enough and are secure enough in our position (and the power of our voices), to call out the kind of banter we’ve been subjected to for way too long.
I have a smidgen of sympathy for Wallace – I am sure when he was a market trader and joked about the size of his cucumbers he thought it was all very jolly. But back then he wasn’t one of the highest profile, highest paid men on TV.
Privileged men, the rock stars of their industries, who make money for production companies, too often get away with behaviour that wouldn’t be tolerated by juniors. Just look at how Huw Edwards and Jeremy Clarkson (who biffed someone on set) got away with egregious behaviour. These big beasts are rarely tackled on their behaviour. The production company wants to keep them sweet. The other staff are instructed to indulge ‘the talent’ – young women around them just have to suck up the sexualised leering, harassment and insults if they want to keep their jobs.
Well not any more. Let’s hear it for the powerful midlife women calling out bad male behaviour. You may not like us, Gregg, but that’s because we don’t have to put up with your boorish jokes or 70s style manners. The world has moved on, there’s a whole cohort of educated, confident, financially powerful and professional women who aren’t going to shut up and put up any more. And thank God for that! It’s time we got rid of the dinosaurs.
Eleanor is the founder of noon.org.uk home of the Queenager and the author of Much More to Come: Lessons on the mayhem and magnificence of midlife (Harper Collins)