MasterChef judge Gregg Wallace may come across as a cheeky chap, but the star hid a dark secret about his childhood for years.
In his autobiography published in 2012, the former grocer, 57, bravely revealed he’d been abused by a family friend, aged just eight.
Gregg recalled the distressing scene in Life On A Plate, in which he spoke about his babysitter’s husband, who at the time was in his 60s.
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The Londoner explained that the man had kissed him on the mouth after telling him he’d “show you what happens when you get a girlfriend”.
Gregg’s shame
Gregg wrote that he could still remember the ‘hot, stinking tobacco breath”, admitting he’d “turned to jelly in a total state of confusion”.
Days after the incident, the presenter said the man, called George, had tried to get him to “lie down” in his bedroom, but he refused.
The MasterChef star said he never told anyone about the assault, writing: “I didn’t really understand what had happened and somehow I knew he (George) would also be in really big trouble.
“I didn’t, until I got older, consider myself a victim. Instead, I felt ashamed, as if I was complicit.”
Family man
Despite the trauma, Gregg happily went on to have two children with his second wife Denise.
The star recently posted a pic with his son Tom, 27, who had visited his dad’s plush pad with his girlfriend, Georgia.
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In December last year, Gregg also revealed a rare snap of his daughter Libby, 25, in which the pair look like two peas in a pod.
Gregg married his first wife Christine in 1999 but then divorced just six weeks later, with him later quipping in his autobiography that it was the “shortest marriage ever”.
Love at first tweet
The star is currently married to caterer Anne-Marie Sterpini, who is 21 years his junior, after she caught his attention on Twitter in 2013.
Anne-Marie tweeted Gregg to ask whether rhubarb and duck were suitable companions after she saw him rustle up a dish on TV.
The couple got married in 2016 and welcomed son Sid Massimo Wallace in May 2019.
Speaking about how “lucky’ he was to have found his partner, Gregg told Hello! he’d won the “Euro Millions the day that young lady walked into my life”.
MasterChef is on BBC One on Friday, April 15, at 8pm
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