In 2015, Charlie Brooker’s satirical TV review Screenwipe ran an item on the strange ubiquity of Gregg Wallace, the food presenter best known as the mainstay judge, “ingredients expert” and “pud” enthusiast across the various iterations of Masterchef. Over increasingly fast-cut footage of our man turning up in a constellation of culinary, magazine, reality, light entertainment and quiz shows, a bemused Brooker concluded, “Say what you like about the TV licence fee, you can’t complain you don’t get enough Gregg Wallace for your money.”
Five years on, in a very different world, Wallace’s ubiquity continues, serene and unabated. The seventh series of Eat Well for Less? aired in September, while Inside the Factory has been through two runs in 2020, including a special “Keeping Britain Going” series designed to reassure a panic-buying public on, among other things, the strong and very long state of the UK’s toilet roll supply chain. Masterchef’s hive mind is still finding new ways to insinuate its way into the schedules, and the 13th series of Masterchef: The Professionals is currently on screens. (The one where Wallace plays senior dinner lady to Monica Galetti’s headmistress and Marcus Wareing’s executive head.) Outside of television, Wallace has, with chilling logic, moved on from food to workout videos.
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