Penny Lancaster has opened up about her experience on Celebrity MasterChef host Gregg Wallace in an exclusive interview with woman&home.
As she posed for the cover of our November issue, the photographer, model, and author described becoming a witness and victim of ‘bullying’ on the BBC1 cooking show in 2021.
Penny said, “The first couple of days was just watching him, watching his character. It was interesting observing the distance between him and John Torode.
“Witnessing the dynamics between them two, it was just chalk and cheese. It was amusing when John Torode, at one point – [perhaps] he could sense that we were all like, ‘Who is this guy? Who is this Gregg? Who does he think he is?’ – said, ‘So everybody, can you guess what Gregg Wallace likes most in life?’
“Then before we said anything, [he replied] ‘Gregg Wallace’. I was like, ‘Oooooh’.”
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(Image credit: Elisabeth Hoff)
Sharing more of her thoughts and feelings about her experience on Celebrity MasterChef, Penny continued, “There’s a part of me that felt real pity for him and also rather annoyed that the production company didn’t step in and deal with it. It made me think, ‘This behaviour is not uncommon’ and how many people have just turned their back to it?’
In her debut memoir Someone Like Me, which is out now, Penny describes finishing filming feeling ‘abused’ and ‘in tears’ after being ‘belittled’ by Wallace, who she says spoke to her ‘menacingly’ and displayed ‘sudden mood changes’ on set – behaviour she believes was overlooked by production company Banijay.
(Image credit: Elisabeth Hoff)
Penny also told woman&home, “I should have written a long letter with my agent to the production company. Maybe had it not been lockdown, I think I put it down to, ‘This is maybe out of character because of the stressful situation we’re all in right now’.”
Adding that she contributed to the seven-month investigation, which upheld 45 out of 83 allegations against the former BBC presenter, including claims of inappropriate sexual language and one incident of unwelcome physical contact, Penny added, “When I heard other women coming forward, I felt it was only right that I helped and added to the weight of that investigation.”
Penny also revealed the horror of enduring multiple experiences of sexual assault, including one aged 12 and another at 17, and explained how finding love with her husband, Sir Rod Stewart, in 1999 offered her a “safe” space to help her move forward from the physical and emotional trauma.
She admitted, “I needed a more mature person to reassure me, and that came from Rod because he’d had a lifetime of experience, so he wasn’t in any rush to push for that side of the relationship. I felt I could trust each step we took.”
Speaking of her 18-year marriage and 26 years with Scottish rocker Rod, Penny declared that intimacy is “still so important”.
She also described the very first kiss they shared at the start of their relationship in 1999 – an “upside down kiss”, which – as she writes in her book – turned her ‘whole body’ to jelly.
“It still works to this day,” “We’re so used to kissing in the same manner, so if you turn it around like that, it feels like the first time you’ve been kissed all over again.”
Read Penny’s full interview in the November issue of woman&home, on shelves now.
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