With the heat rising will celebrity chef Gino D’Acampo soon be following MasterChef’s Greg Wallace out of the kitchen?
Accusations of ‘shocking and inappropriate behaviour’ towards a female ITV employee when the 48-year-old was resident chef on This Morning threaten to derail another cheeky chappy gravy train, like the one Gregg Wallace has also been riding.
Wallace is facing a raft of allegations – including lurid on-set boasts about his sex life – and while there isn’t the same level of accusations aimed at D’Acampo, he is also prone to ‘jokingly’ flashing at junior coworkers – recently on the set of new series, Emission Impossible. Trouble is no one’s laughing.
The truth is that for too long both men have been overexposed – in every sense of the word – and it’s become their downfall.
Indulged by TV bosses lazily reliant on the same old faces and formulas, ‘talents’ stretched thinly across a steady stream of primetime projects, it’s no surprise the star treatment has given rise rampant egos and complacency that can all too often lead to an abuse of power.
D’Acampo has indeed enjoyed a heady ascent from convicted burglar in the late ’90s (targeting 80s pop star Paul Young’s house) to whipping up a Carbonaras on This Morning.
Never shy, the pleased with himself pasta pimper’s CV spans hosting Family Fortunes to never ending road trips with fellow ubiquitous screen hoggers, Fred Sirieix and chef Gordon Ramsey.
It’s predictable schtick; Top Gear lite, all thrusting midlife machismo and over gelled thinning quiffs contending with manufactured mishaps on their travels around Europe and the US in a campervan.
Gino D’Acampo promoted his latest show with Fred Sirieix amid claims he is being ‘eased out’ by ITV
Gino D’Acampo was seen playing the guitar naked in the new Gino and Fred: Emission Impossible trailer
Gregg Wallace is a bewildered, blundering dinosaur of a man who just can’t understand why his world has come crashing down around him, writes Sarah Vine
Unfortunately, it’s only fuelled D’Acampo’s increasingly boorish infantile antics which include wearing a sporran, which he calls Justin Beaver and finding the flimsiest excuses to get his kit off because, hey, that’s what hilarious excitable Gino does.
Viewers of American Road Trip: Brokeback Mountain, were ‘treated’ to close ups of the chef’s bare behind hanging out of lewd cowboy chaps when in Texas. While in a promotional trailer for Emission Impossible billed as a geographical, culinary, cultural and eco-friendly tour of Austria and Croatia, a naked D’Acampo is exposing his privates as he plays a guitar on the beach.
It’s the usual cheap, easy laughs relied upon to pad out proceedings, but in the wake of recent accusations it’s all looking increasingly seedy and desperate.
Meanwhile, for Wallace, the big fade out is already underway – a Christmas edition of MasterChef has been axed and the editing suite is on overtime to minimise the presenter’s screen time as the latest series of MasterChef the professionals reaches its finale.
A recent episode – reduced the presenter’s screen time to barely ten minutes and most of that saw him tucking into a dish and chuckling over the innuendo of ‘small firm dumplings’.
From greengrocer to TV judge waxing lyrical on plumpness of a scallop, Wallace’s staying power up to this point remains one television’s biggest mysteries.
While his booming enthusiasm may have just about worked in his comfort zone of the MasterChef kitchen, his limitations have long been apparent in the many other TV vehicles dished out to him over the past two decades.
Guffawing his way around various UK factories for his Inside the Factory series – his most notable contribution has been dispensing jibes to female workers about their weight – the old charmer…..
Gino bared all in a recent visit to Texas with his friends Gordon Ramsay and Fred Sirieix for their travel series
Gino has a sporran, which he calls Justin Beaver, and regularly flashes on location and wears on social media
Kirsty Wark with Gregg Wallace on Celebrity MasterChef in 2011
Then there’s the various travel series visiting European cities in Greg Wallace weekends and trips to South Africa, where he offered little more than to bellow ‘amazing’ at most of what he encounters: Michael Palin needn’t be worried.
The BBC investigation is ongoing and some of those who have piled in to present themselves as victims notably former celebrity contestants Penny Lancaster and presenter Melanie Sykes have been distracting white noise from the potentially more serious incidents.
Wallace choosing not to eat Mrs Rod Stewart’s raw egg mayonnaise is hardly a hanging offence that constitutes bullying as she claims.
Adding that she is ‘prepared to talk to the authorities’ is as laughable as Syke’s claim that her time in the MasterChef kitchen led to her walk away from the TV career – oh, please, so nothing to do with the lack of offers then….
Elsewhere, though and the footage is telling even in the more subtle interactions, notably Wallace’s irritation with then 57-year-old feisty Kirsty Wark over an untidy workstation. Forget any spilt gravy. Wark’s biggest crime for men like Wallace is not toeing the line or being in the preferred age bracket.
Used to being the loudest voices in the room, high on the high-octane elixir of celebrity for Wallace et al the rules stopped applying but they’re far from the only ones – sports pundit Jermaine Jenas and Phillip Schofield have also fallen from grace this year.
Over promoted egos and questionable, entitled attitudes are a bad mix. It should be another wakeup call to the networks to spread the talent pool further because the viewing public deserve better.
