Penny Lancaster says MasterChef team 'didn't support her' during Gregg Wallace fallout

Penny Lancaster has revealed she felt a lack of support from the MasterChef team during her bad experience with Gregg Wallace. Rod Stewart's wife admitted the situation left her feeling like she had no one to turn to.

The 54-year-old model claims she was bullied by the former cooking show presenter, saying she was the "victim to bullying and harassment". It came as she appeared as a contestant on Celebrity MasterChef in 2021.

Now, in a chat with Vanessa Feltz on the presenter's 5 programme, Vanessa, Penny reflected on her experience of working with Gregg. She claimed she didn't feel as if she had anyone to turn to at the time as she held concerns over his behaviour.

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"I was so looking forward to that experience and everything was wonderful," she said. "Apart from the experience I had with Gregg Wallace in one particular moment.

"Without going into details, yes, I felt like I was bullied and harassed, and disappointingly, I didn't feel I was supported by the team, the production team at the time, but I kind of just buried it and it stayed buried until the accusations came out more recently.

"And then Rod flew to social media to in my defence, but I still wasn't prepared to call and make it public in the media.""

She went on to explain why she chose to speak out in a bid to contribute to the investigation into Gregg's actions on the show: "I spoke with the investigation team because I thought that was kind of the best way to go.

"I think by people coming forward and speaking their story and their truth, no matter how historic an event is - collaborating together, building a strong case, you're going to have a better chance at of a successful outcome."

Her comments come after Gregg was placed under investigation last year due to historic complaints that he’d made “sexual comments” on set of MasterChef.

In July this year, it was revealed that Gregg, 60, had been fired from the BBC show after the investigation upheld 45 out of 83 allegations of inappropriate behaviour. He had previously said that the review exonerated him of "all the serious allegations" but he apologised for "inappropriate" humour and language.

Despite his axing, he remains confident he wants to remain in the public eye. Discussing his career in a video message that was uploaded to Instagram last month, Gregg said that he's "had to stay public" if he wants to "earn a living".

"Social media can be really cruel, really angry, really rude - but we all know this!" he said. "I'm getting attacked by people that have never read the report into the investigation and think I'm guilty of all sorts of things that simply are not true."

He continued: "I had an autism diagnosis in January at 60 years old. I get attacked by people that somehow think I'm making it up. During this time, I've worked hard and got myself qualified as a PT. And I get attacked on that, where people think somehow it's not true.

"Every day it's just a battle against people that, I don't know, just really wanna attack you. However, there are also loads and loads of people that send kind messages and messages of support."

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