Gregg Wallace on taking criticism on the chin - and being less than pleased with his Strictly outfit
"The irony is not lost on me that I’m a judge on one show and now I’m being judged on another," says the MasterChef star
The tables have turned on MasterChef judge Gregg Wallace.
No longer will he be passing judgement on the cooking skills of others. Instead, he's poised to take some feedback of his own on the 12th series of Strictly Come Dancing.
"The irony is not lost on me that I’m a judge on one show and now I’m being judged on another," he told us at the launch of the Saturday night show earlier this week. "And also that we had Craig [Revel Horwood] on Celebrity MasterChef. I’m racking my brains to figure out how nice or tough I was with him..."
Either way, Wallace is keen to take whatever criticism comes his way well.
"I am going to take it on the chin. I’m not going to fight back. I’m going to try and accept it with adult composure," he says.
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If we're honest, Wallace - who says he loves dancing and is "always the one trying to get my mate’s gran up on the floor" - doesn't actually seem that bothered by the prospect of his moves being critiqued by Craig Revel Horwood and co. It seems he's much more worried about the outfit he'll be dancing in...
"I went for my first fitting and they gave me nice pinstriped trousers and waistcoat I thought, ‘This looks cool’ - and then I saw the young, fit men with their shirts unbuttoned and those ultra-tight trousers and just looked at myself and though, ‘Oh I see.'
"That’s not how I saw myself!" he laughed, adding: "When I saw Thom Evans in his outfit my heart just sank. I thought, ‘I’m the fat, old, bald dad.' No one’s going to ask me to take my top off. There’s no way."
If they did though, they'd find some Strictly-standard tan underneath.
"I’ll embrace [the fake tan]," he told us. "I help my girlfriend put hers on her back – I know what I’m doing!"
Strictly Come Dancing starts on Sunday at 8:00pm on BBC1
