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PIERS MORGAN
Gregg Wallace isn’t the only current BBC sexism scandal – but women are too scared to talk about the other outrage
Women fear expressing their fury about the erosion of their rights to fairness and equality
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I DON'T know Gregg Wallace, but he’s obviously a David Brent-scale sexist pig at best and possibly, if the groping allegations are true, a lot worse.
One person who almost certainly knows the truth is his long-time MasterChef co-host John Torode, whose silence gets more damningly louder by the day.
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But whilst I understand and empathise with the cacophony of outrage from women over Wallace’s indefensible – as we’ve seen by his own risibly awful hole-digging attempts to defend himself - behaviour, I’m at the same time bemused by the lack of outrage from women over another equally indefensible sexism scandal that is also currently unfurling at the BBC.
Last week, our public broadcaster announced that their women’s footballer of the year was Zambian star Barbra Banda, despite the player being axed from the 2022 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations for failing to meet sex-eligibility criteria for entry.
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At the previous 2021 Olympics, Banda was found to have testosterone levels that exceeded the maximum permitted, and was subsequently reported to have refused hormone suppression treatment.
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Banda’s BBC award win prompted Tracy Edwards, Britain’s former round-the-world sailing champion, to rage about "the destruction of women’s sport", and her fellow ex-Olympian, swimmer Sharron Davies, to post on X: "It’s so sad the BBC are actively encouraging the destruction and loss of opportunities for female athletes in sport.
"I’m so disheartened and disappointed they are actively cheering this unfairness on."
It also prompted long-time women’s rights defender JK Rowling to say: "Presumably the BBC decided this was more time efficient than going door to door to spit directly in women's faces."
But other than that, barely a famous woman raised a concerned eyebrow about it, not least any notable women at the BBC.
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And now we learn that the BBC has named a Colombian transgender scientist, Brigitte Baptiste, in their annual 100 Women List for 2024.
The citation describes Baptiste as a "trans woman" who "explores the common patterns between biodiversity and gender identity," and uses a "queer lens to analyse landscapes and species in a bid to expand the notion of 'nature' to better protect ecosystems".
Gregg Wallace is why I ended my TV career, Melanie Sykes says - as she slams ‘jaw-dropping’ behaviour on MasterChef set
All of which sounds like utter nonsense to me, but what’s even more nonsensical is the fact the BBC has deprived an actual woman from appearing on its list of the year’s most influential women, and instead given a place to a biological man.
Why aren’t more women expressing their fury about this appalling erosion of women’s rights to fairness and equality?
I’ll tell you why: fear.
One very famous Hollywood actress told me she doesn’t ever publicly talk about the trans issue anymore, or even define what a woman is, when asked, because she hates the abuse and vitriol that inevitably follows on social media by the vile torrent-load.
I know many other women, including several of the BBC’s biggest stars, who feel the exact same way.
They’ve been shamed and vilified into supine surrender by a hyper-aggressive trans lobby that races to harangue and cancel any woman who dares poke their head over this parapet.
So, yes, I stand with the women who are outraged over the way Gregg Wallace has treated women and applaud those who have finally spoken out about it after years of being too worried about the consequences.
But I ask those same women: why don’t you now find the courage to do the same about the way the BBC is now actively celebrating the antithesis of what it even means to be a woman?
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Coleen Rooney is going to win I’m A Celebrity.
First, because she’s by far the biggest current celebrity in there.
And second, because she’s revealing herself to be an incredibly nice, down-to-earth, kind-hearted woman with a great sense of humour.
I laughed when the jungle campers were asked to put in their orders for the automated treat machine, and as the others asked for chocolate and crisps, Coleen suddenly piped up: "Get us a bottle of vodka!"
It took me back to a spectacularly funny and entertaining dinner that I had with her and husband Wayne, and my wife Celia, at Soho House in Los Angeles.
It lasted four hours, involved copious amounts of alcohol, and both the Rooneys were great company.
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It was obvious that for all their well-documented problems, their marriage was rock solid.
"I’m much calmer now than I used to be," Wayne said. "I used to go out all the time, drink too much and get into trouble. Now I just like a nice quiet time these days, no bother."
Coleen agreed. "Wayne’s a different man now, he really is."
"What’s been the main reason?" I asked.
"She is," he replied, looking lovingly at his wife. "Col knows me better than anyone."
At midnight, when dinner was over, Wayne stood up, tripped, and crashed into our table, sending a wine bucket, two empty bottles, four glasses, and two chairs flying.
He then fell backwards, into a large nearby olive tree pot.
Coleen burst out laughing and helped him out of the pot and back onto his feet.
"I think it’s time we got you home to bed, isn’t it Wayne…."
The next morning, I awoke to see a tweet from Mrs Rooney saying what a good time she and Wayne were having at Bootsy Bellows nightclub in West Hollywood.
It was posted at 5am.
PRESIDENTIAL CALL
I HAD a missed call from Donald Trump last week, and assumed he was seeking to recruit me as his new White House Communications Director.
But in fact, when he rang back, he said he was watching me on TV in America and thought I looked so great that he had to ring and tell me that.
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I know, I know, it sounds utterly preposterous that the President-elect could take time out of his ridiculously busy schedule to compliment me on my aesthetic quality.
But he did, and hey, if the world’s most powerful man wants to do that, who am I to argue?
Even if it does raise immediate concerns that his eyesight might be going the same way as Sir Elton John’s…
IT'S CALLED ACTING
I loved Rupert Everett blasting the "bullsh*t" modern scourge of supposed cultural appropriation in movies with activists demanding only gay actors should play gay roles and bullying the likes of Scarlett Johansson out of playing a trans character in the film Rub & Tug because she’s not trans herself.
As he said, the whole point of acting is that actors act roles.
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Did it matter that Tom Hanks isn’t gay when he played a gay man in Philadelphia, the first big movie about HIV/AIDS, and did it so well that he won an Oscar, and shone such a massively important and effective global light on the killer disease?
It did to the woke brigade, who’ve since attacked him so much for it that he now says he shouldn’t have accepted the part because there was a lack of authenticity in "a straight guy playing a gay guy".
What poppycock.
isn’t a serial killer but was chilling as Hannibal Lecter.
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Robert Ne Niro isn’t a boxer but crushed it in Raging Bull.
Marlon Brando wasn’t a Mafia boss but played one better than the real thing in The Godfather.
Rock Hudson was one of Hollywood’s all-time great male romantic leads yet was also secretly gay.
Just let actors do what they do best – act!
TRIGGER POINT
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After the latest trigger warning absurdity, in which the British Board of Film Classification issued a trigger warning on the smash hit movie Wicked because of potential discrimination against green-skinned women, I urgently need my own 24/7 trigger warning alarm system alerting me to any similar trigger warnings that have an immediate and harmful triggering effect on my spleen.
DON'T REAPPLY
I can’t pretend to be too upset that the infamous Groucho Club has been shut down, pending a police investigation into an alleged rape on the premises.
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They once rejected me for membership, adding: "We don’t think it would be appropriate in your case for you to reapply."
Ironically, it seems the behaviour of the people they do let in is too inappropriate for me to ever want to.
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