Well, I sort of had to, try as one might, it's been impossible to escape the fucker. Turn on the news, Gregg Wallace, look at your phone, Gregg Wallace, strike up a conversation with a complete stranger, Gregg Wallace. I'm pretty sure he just served me this frankly mediocre tea I'm currently drinking, sat in Starbucks (look, it's the only place open that's not booze, alright) while I while away the time that my youngest is at tutoring, thinking about Gregg sodding Wallace.
I am, fairly obviously, not going to go into the details of the story. You, presumably, already know all about it, because it's been nigh on impossible to escape it. That is more what concerns me regarding this whole sorry farrago.
That a middle aged man has spoken inappropriately throughout his career is, to my mind, not exactly news. I do not wish to downplay the importance of this story, to be clear, I find his actions deplorable, and his defence even more so. But I am somewhat nonplussed as to how the BBC, in a week where civil war rages in Syria, South Korea declared and undeclared martial law, we received the news that the final bill for the last Government's disastrous Rwanda policy is 716 million quid, the French Government teeters on the brink of collapse and any numbers of other events, has decided that the shit banter of a Masterchef co-host is somehow the lead news item.
South Korea, tbf, did knock it off lead for a bit, but just as soon as sanity returned, there was Gregg, bopping about at the top of the news again.
Lord that extra g is getting on my tits every time I type it.
To be clear, the man's a dinosaur, and I applaud each and every one of the women who called him out, it's high time that this behaviour was stamped out for good. But I do wonder at the saturation coverage of it all.
Whenever a Beeb presenter publicly shits the bed, as seems to happen with depressing frequency, the corporation as a whole seems to feel the need to put itself through a process of public flagellation. Maybe in a vain attempt to stave off its manifold critics, maybe through a misguided desire to be seen to be "doing something . In the monstrous cases of Savile and Huw Edwards that's fair enough, but this is of a different order.
Everyone knows a Gregg Wallace, everyone's worked with a bloke who says inappropriate things with relentless tediousness. We don't have any at ours because I tend to sack them if they don't learn, but I've certainly worked with a few.
Which makes his actions in his defence all the more stupid. I'd have paid good money to see the expression on his agent's face when he heard about about "middle class women of a certain age", because if there was a way out before, there isn't now.
And it's all so stupid. This is a hyper-forgetful age, where the public's love of a redemption arc tends to outstrip its desire for vengeance. If he'd kept his gob shut, maybe a bland press release or two along the lines of how he personally doesn't recognise these actions, but he's willing to listen and learn, then in six month's time he could have a four part series where he "goes on a journey" nodding and looking serious while academics explain feminism to him, after that a brief stint on I'm a Celebrity and that's it, reputation laundered.
But nope. "Middle class women of a certain age" that's all anyone's going to remember. Hell of a career epitaph.
And while I think the man's an oaf, this says as much about the structures that surround people in any position of power as it does about the people themselves. Actions don't occur in a vacuum. He will have presumably been pulled up about this before, but it hasn't stopped him. For his own sake, someone should have given him a proper bollocking ten, fifteen years ago. It could have saved a lot of people a lot of heartache.
It's on all of us to deal with the Greggs of this world, because it's long past time. It's no longer an acceptable defence to say that's just what you're like, it never should have been. People act like the noughties were the 1800s, they weren't, this shit was unacceptable then as it is now.
So I don't really want to hear any more about him. I don't want the BBC to launch a pointless, self-flagellating investigation which will only tell us things we already knew, I don't want grandstanding MPs pointlessly sticking their oars in, desperate for a bit of moral high ground to cling to. He's fucked up, he's cooked, he's done, let's hear no more about him.
Comments
Post a Comment