Food critic Grace Dent has been tipped to replace Gregg Wallace as the presenter of MasterChef. Wallace stepped aside from the show earlier this month after dozens of former contestants and crew members came forward with accusations of sexual misconduct. The BBC are expected to make an announcement this week about who will take over from Wallace, and a source told the Sun newspaper that Dent would be “the perfect choice”.
Dent, 5 1, is a Guardian restaurant critic and wrote a column for the Evening Standard from 2011 to 2017. She is also a regular guest judge on MasterChef alongside John Torode. Dent says she is “almost vegan” and eats a mainly plant-based diet. “The truth is I love animals more than I love most humans,” she wrote in the Guardian. Dent also hosts a podcast called Comfort Eating with Grace Dent, where she interviews celebrity guests about their relationship to food.
She was raised in a suburb of Carlisle in the North of England and says that she “grew up eating very simply”. A classic dinner in the Dent household was “half a tin of Heinz tomato soup and some white bread toast spread with Dairylea. Absolute happiness.”
In 2011 she described reality TV show I’m A Celebrity as “a puerile venture into starvation, televised constipation and animal cruelty, abbreviated by ads for Iceland £1 curries”. However, she also admitted it was a guilty pleasure and last year she appeared as a contestant on the show. Dent left the jungle after a week due to health concerns but said that living in a rainforest with no phone or shelter gave her “a short, sharp glimpse into the pain some folk worldwide endure”.
Dent is a feminist and has previously spoken out about sexual misconduct in the workplace. She criticised James Corden for defending Harvey Weinstein in 2017 and wrote about the “pushback, derision, disbelief, mud-slinging and career jeopardy that a difficult woman will face for saying “Not ok. And not fair.” Dent is yet to speak out on Gregg Wallace’s alleged behaviour.
