Gregg Wallace's colleagues from MasterChef: The Professionals have had their past remarks resurface this week as he faces various allegations, including making "inappropriate sexual jokes", from 13 people over a 17-year period.
Last week, it was announced that Gregg is to step away from the BBC cooking show while historical misconduct complaints are externally reviewed by the producer, Banijay UK.
The 60-year-old's lawyers say "it is entirely false that he engages in behaviour of a sexually harassing nature".
Following the news, comments made by his MasterChef co-stars John Torode, 59, Monica Galetti, 49, and Marcus Wareing, 54, have come back to light.
Monica rejoined MasterChef: The Professionals last year after serving as a judge from 2009 to 2021, while Marcus has been part of the BBC series since 2014.
OK! magazine reported that Monica, upon her return, playfully commented on Marcus's hair having turned grey in her absence, joking: "But I think we all get that for a year working with Gregg."
She also remarked before the previous series aired: "I was missing Gregg's jokes until the first day of filming. Marcus and I never get the punchlines so we hear them over and over."
The publication reported that chef Marcus expressed there had been occasional discord regarding decisions on the BBC show.
He was reported as saying: "If it was just me and Monica, then we're good at predicting the winner, but because Gregg is in the mix, it f***s it all up a bit. We have times where we do disagree but everyone's entitled to their point of view. There are three votes and in the early days I'd be fighting like a cat in a bag but now it's like, 'Whatever'."
Gregg Wallace speaks about complaints against him
John Torode previously made headlines after claiming that he had “never been friends” with Gregg.
He said in an interview with The Mirror in 2017: “It’s funny, we’ve never been friends. We’ve not been to each other’s houses. If we go away to somewhere like South Africa, we do things separately. If we do go out for a drink, I’ll invariably be at one end of a big old table and he’ll be at the other.”
However, John was best man during Gregg’s wedding to Anne-Maire Sterpini in 2016 and the latter told Lorraine at the time that they are “very close”.
Last week, Aggie Mackenzie, presenter of How Clean is Your House and star of Celebrity MasterChef 2011, told Times Radio that the hosts were “very different”.
She said: “They behave very differently. And I observed that when the cameras were off, they would go to separate ends of the room. They didn't really communicate or have a connection off screen."
