Gregg Wallace has responded to the “cruel” backlash over his viral interview about his Saturday regime.
The MasterChef judge has faced criticism online after appearing to suggest in a Telegraph interview that he only spends and hour and a half with his autistic, non-verbal son each day, but spends two hours in his office playing video games.
Wallace was also accused of “not wanting” his son after many misconstrued his comments about becoming a father for the third time in his fifties.
“There are just two things I want to address here with Sid [Wallace’s son]. People said, ‘So you spend an an hour and a half with your son, but then spend two hours on your computer.’ No – I’m with my son in the house all the time,” Wallace clarified in an Instagram Live stream.
“I just didn’t write down, ‘Had a tickle with Sid, playing around the living room’ – you’re not logging every minute of the day. I just logged the blocks. So, it didn’t mean that’s all I saw him that day.”
He continued: “If you’re living in a house with someone, you’re interacting with them all the time. Not only that – that is a snapshot of one Saturday. I hope that makes sense to everybody.
“And the other thing as well – and I’m almost going to cry over this – people saying that Sid was unwanted. It took us two years to conceive with Sid. Two years.”
Wallace said the comments were “nasty” and that his interview for the Saturday column was “innocent”.
Wallace welcomed his son Sid, four, with his wife Anna in 2019. He has two older children, both in their late twenties, from his second marriage to pastry chef Denise children, whom he married in 1999 and divorced in 2004. He has been married to Anna since 2016.
