Miss Me? - Wallace and Vomit

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

Lily Allen and Kiell Smith-Bynoe discuss Gregg Wallace, acting together and I’m A Celeb.This episode contains very strong language and adult themes. Credits: Producer: Flossie Barratt Technical Producer: Will Gibson Smith Production Coordinator: Hannah Bennett Executive Producers: Dino Sofos and Ellie Clifford Assistant Commissioner for BBC: Lorraine Okuefuna Commissioning Editor for BBC: Dylan Haskins Miss Me? is a Persephonica production for BBC Sounds

BBC Sounds music radio podcast. This episode of Miss Me. I am Lily Allen and my co-host Makita Oliver is not here because she is having an operation which she's recovered from, everything's fine, but she needs a little bit more rest. So my friend, Kyle Smith-Bino has come here to join me today. Say hi, Kyle. Hi. How's it going?

Yeah, I'm all right. How are you? How am I? I'm okay. Yeah. Was that convincing? No. Oh no.

No, no, no, not at all. I'm having a bit of a rough time of it at the moment, but I'm trying to sort of soldier on, you know? But I am very happy to see you. I haven't seen you for ages. I know, it's been ages, hasn't it? When did we, you came to see me in my play last year. I came to see you in your play,

which you were very good in, well done. Thank you so much. And I came to your you in your play, which you were very good in, well done. Thank you so much. And I came to your dressing room and saw all your shoes. It's the most shoes I've seen outside of a shop. Really? Yep. How's just my dressing room collection as well. That wasn't even my house collection.

Oh yeah. And I've got a lot, this is from a boy who's got shoes. You've got shoes. I know you've got shoes. Yeah, that was extreme. Kyle and I met two years ago. Yeah. We made a comedy drama series

called Dreamland. Comedy with a question mark. It was comedy. Comedy? It was comedy. Yeah, comedy, I guess it was a comedy drama, but it was marketed as a comedy. Right, yeah. But you go and cry.

I do. Well, everyone. Most people have watched it. A lot of people, even up to just Friday, just gone, someone in the club said to me that they watched Dreamland and they cried. Someone in the club. Someone in the club.

That's so sweet. I mean, I think that's what they said. It was really loud in there. Yeah, so we made this show for Sky, a comedy drama series called Dreamland and you were very naughty in that program. So was I. Yeah. But you probably naughtier. Probably. There was a bit of a love triangle between my character, your character and and Freema's character who played my

sister. I can't even remember anyone's names in the show. What was my name? Your name was Mel. Your name was Mel. Your sister was Trish. And I was Spence. Spence, yeah. Is that like really weird? Is that weird that I don't remember my own name in the show? I think so, yeah.

Yeah, what the fuck is going on with my brain? But did you watch it when it came out? No. Right. I do remember you saying that you weren't gonna watch it. I don't really like watching myself on screen. Yeah, I remember you saying. Hey, what about when we had an intimacy coach?

We had, because remember we had the first one and then we had the second one. And the first one was the one that we struggled with a little bit. Yeah, my just like, my just like, wacky brain couldn't understand what she was asking us to do because she'd be like, you had to like ask for permission in reverse, like reverse. Yeah, I had to ask permission for you to touch me. You had to ask permission, my permission.

Yeah, so I would say, Lily, can I put your hand on my chest? Yeah, what the fuck is that all about? Oh my God. Wait. It was very confusing, especially if it's your first time doing it and you're like, what?

I'm just trying to remember my own name, babes. Yeah. Like, yeah. I don't know who any of these characters are. What? Who? Yeah but I think the second one we got had slightly different tactics that helped a little bit yeah better yeah and I saw her in Budapest okay because there's quite I just did a film and there was quite a lot of sex in that. What was the film you did? I it hasn't been announced yet and I'm told not, I'm not allowed to. Are you the new James Bond?

I'm the... Yes, yes. I would love that for you, by the way. I... It's quite a lot of pressure though, isn't it? Is it? Yeah. I'd say pressure's off once you've got that role.

You're like, okay. Do what you want. East Londoner. I don't know if I'd like that. I'd like to play like a Bond villain. Yeah. But if you know someone. I don't know anyone.

Otherwise I would have got myself the Bond theme tune. Right. Oh yeah, of course. You could write one though. I could write one. Write one just in case. I think it would oh yeah, of course. You could write one though. I could write one. Write one just in case. I think it would be a waste of time. One thing I did wanna say about Dreamland.

Yes, yes, carry on. Because someone asked me the other day, like what surprised me the most about you. And when we were talking about acting, I was saying that I wasn't surprised that you were a good actor because like you're a performer anyway. So yeah, you'll be, sure you'll be good.

What did surprise me the most in those six weeks was when we were filming in South London and I was in your car at one stage. I think we were just like in between takes, just sat about. And we spoke about food. And then I mentioned like, I wanted Caribbean food or whatever. And you said, you'll just text Giggs and I was like what? And you text Giggs and he replied to you straight away saying like I'll

send my chef or something like that. I was like what the hell is going on here? Giggs texted me this morning. Still sending chefs? No he was asking me to make sure that I'm available for his Gigsmas party. Oh, that's nice. But I don't think I'm around. Oh. I don't know, because let me have a look. Gigs. That was the most surprising part for me.

That I'm friends with gigs. I guess so, yeah, but also the speed at which you replied. I don't know if I like that. Like you think that Giggs would like leave me on read? Like you do to me. Is that what? Is this what I'm doing? That's what I'm getting at, yeah.

He said, you, my G, come on, I need my G at Giggsmas. And I said, what's the date? He told me the date. He said, come on, it's going to be so good, Beauty and the Beast. And I said, what's the date? He told me the date. He said, come on, it's going to be so good. Beauty and the Beast. And I said, lul. Okay, let me see what I can do. And he said, I don't want you to miss it.

Smiley face, smiley face, smiley face, smiley face. Well, four. Four smiley faces. Lovely. But you will miss it because you can't make it. I think so. I think I'm gonna be in Los Angeles. I see. Fine, I'll go. Should we talk about Greg Wallace? Yeah. Facing a variety of accusations

of inappropriate sexual jokes and complaints. Have you read his Day in the Life? No. Have you heard about his Day in the Life? No. So he published a Day in the Life in, I think it was The Guardian, that might be wrong, what he does on a daily basis.

And it's insane. Oh, tell me. What is it? So it starts with he wakes up at five and reads for an hour. Okay, that's already insane. But okay. Yeah. And then he has breakfast. Then he has breakfast. Kippers, I'm imagining. And checks his emails. Then he works out five days a week. He's, I'm imagining. And checks his emails.

Then he works out five days a week. He's down at the gym. Right, this is verbatim. I'm down at the gym half an hour before it opens. They let me in earlier so I have a swimming sauna by myself. Knock. What?

So that's at 7 a.m. 10.30 a.m. meets his PA at the local harvester for breakfast. Second breakfast? Yep. The local harvester, you know. Bacon, sausage and fried egg. Then he says, people say to me, I didn't expect you to see you in here. And he says, look, they do grill chicken, there's a salad bar and I've never been disappointed.

This is daily, by the way. This is every day. Wait, no, it's not necessarily every day. It's a day in the life of, so it's just one day. It's not. None of us do the same thing every day. This is his Saturday. He meets his PA at Harvester on a Saturday. At 10.30am. God love her or him or them.

Helen. Does she have over certain age She's a middle-class woman over certain age he's written here He's yeah, he says he's regularly been disappointed in a three-star Michelin restaurants around Europe, but never in a harvester interesting 12 p.m. Back home for lunch, which his wife will have ready on the table. 12? 12pm. Even though he's had sausage, egg and chips at 10.30 and breakfast before that? Yes. This guy's a mad man.

But he said he's got less than 18% body fat and a six pack. Okay. So back home for lunch at 12, his wife has his ready on the table. Her white bean soup with a crust of bread is a family favourite. Good on him. 130pm he spends an hour and a half with his son. Then 3pm he plays Total War Saga Thrones of Britannia for three hours. I'm getting Sigma vibes. Someone's been hanging out in the manor's for it.

Someone's been hanging out in the manor's for it. That is until 6pm. And his name's Greg Wallace. And then he cooks dinner for the family once a week. Okay. 8pm bed. 8pm bed. Yeah. You know what, it's actually made me feel a little bit sick listening to his day in

the life. Because of all those dinners. But then again, you know, I am a middle class woman of a certain age, so obviously, I'm going to think certain things. Right, yeah. We've been trying to figure out this timeline, so I think that essentially what has happened is I think that there was like a BBC news investigation and there were some complaints over the across a range of shows over a 17 year period yeah and told them about allegations of an inappropriate sexual comments by Wallace I think we've got a clip from broadcasting

legend Kirsty Wark. Should we have a listen to it? Yes. The thing is that the fly in the ointment on occasion was Greg Wallace. The first time that I suppose we were subjected to a kind of sexually inappropriate story was very early morning and we were in a retirement home and Greg Wallace came in and launched into a soliloquy essentially, a story of a sexually inappropriate nature about his, well now, former wife. I was really shocked and it wasn't as if it was anyone engaged with this, it was

completely one-way traffic. But I think people were uncomfortable. My livelihood didn't depend on my being on MasterChef, but the livelihood of a lot of people in that program did. And it's a very insecure industry. It looks like a glamorous industry. It's an insecure industry. So you would have runners, producers, camera crew, executives.

All with rents and mortgages and so forth. And I wonder if they just felt they couldn't speak out. First thing in the morning. Such a cliche, isn't it? Like people coming to work and making sex jokes about their wives. Yeah. That's like a stereotypical like, Oh, her indoors.

She was knocking me off last night. Ugh. That's mad. I'm so bored of men. Okay, we're gonna play our follow-up clip now, which is Greg makes things worse for himself. Now I've been doing MasterChef for 20 years. And apparently now, I'm reading in the paper,

there's been 13 complaints in that time. I can see the complaints coming from a handful of middle-class women of a certain age just from Celebrity MasterChef. This isn't right. In 20 years, over 20 years of television, can you imagine how many women, female contestants on MasterChef, have made sexual remarks or sexual innuendo? Can you imagine? What does any of that mean? What is the logic there? I don't understand. What's that got to do with anything? Yeah.

Also, if you're saying like, I've been in this 20 years, and it's all for women of a certain age, is it like women who are younger at that time? I think the insinuation is that like, they're just bitter because they're old. Right. But it's very like, you know, something that you might, like a conversation that you might overhear on the terraces or like in the pub, isn't it? It's very blokey. Yeah, proper.

She's just a fucking woman of a certain age, middle class bitch. I don't know what I've turned into Fagin. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a little bit. A little bit pick a pocket or two. But also he's not even like, he's not even said none of these things are untrue. No, I know. But it doesn't matter because the people that are saying it are like washed up old women. So who cares? We all know why they're saying it.

That's mental. But also like, you know, you hear this and then you read his day in the life and you go, I understand this person as a whole, as a 3D character. I'll see you at 10.30 at Harvest. Yeah. We'll have a great chat about it. Anyway, got a third clip.

Do you want to hear it? Yeah. I want to apologize for any offense that I caused with my post yesterday and any upset I may have caused to a lot of people. I wasn't in a good head space when I posted it. I've been under a huge amount of stress, a lot of emotion.

I felt very alone under siege yesterday when I posted it. It's obvious to me, I need to take some time out. Now, while this investigation is underway, I hope you understand and I do hope that you will accept this apology. Classic narcissist. I'm the victim here. I only said it because I was under extreme stress. Go and have three hours of modern warfare or whatever you're playing and then come back to it. Yeah, come back. Yeah.

Come back to me. Circle back. Wait for it to all blow over. Anyway, I'm quite happy to take Greg Orness's position on MasterChef moving forward. Oh yeah, I forgot you're a chef. And I can make lewd sex jokes as well. So even everything out. Yeah. Are you willing to shave your head?

No. Right. I will not, that is non-negotiable for me. Sure. We are recording this on Tuesday afternoon on the 3rd of December. And at this moment, it's still an internal BBC investigation. Yeah.

Should we have a break? Should we have a Kit Kat? Yeah, let's have a little break. Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back. Hi, it's me, Lily and Kyle. Hello. Would you go on I'm A Celebrity, get me out of here? No, do you watch it? I've seen it. Yeah We've seen this series. I've seen some bits of this series because at my mom's house, it's

Constant ITV really sorry BBC, but it is She loves Bradley Walsh the girl loves Bradley Walsh. The girl loves Bradley Walsh. What can I say? Who doesn't love Bradley Walsh? But yeah, I've been, can I say this? I don't know if I can say it. What, you've been asked? Yeah, fuck it.

I've been asked. I've been, no, I've been approached. I wouldn't say it's been a straight out and out offer. I think this year is the first year that I haven't been asked Really a long time. Yeah, what do you think? That means my star is fading or do you think it means that they're like no too many times No, they're probably like she's in contract with bbc to do a podcast. So It's probably not gonna she's not gonna have five weeks to you know, go and eat some camel balls or whatever. Yeah

Uh, why have you said no previously? Um... snobbery. Sure. Is that more about like, how it looks to be on the show or about the actual luxury things that you enjoy, which will be stripped away from you in the jungle? I think it's actually, to be honest with you, it's just fear that like, I don't wanna know that people think I'm a dick. Right.

And I feel like I might like reveal too much myself and people would, you know, not like me. Is there a curiosity in it? Are you like sort of interested in if you could do it? Yeah, for sure. But then also, you don't know how much of it like they well we knew I guess you do know how much of it they you know they create heroes and villains don't they and you know you're not getting the full picture you're getting like who fits those character arcs the

best and how they can chop it all together. But I think I could be the villain and I don't know if I necessarily wanna know that about myself. I can't imagine that because going back to your Master Chef furry, you are a good cook. That's true. And they love them cooks in the jungle.

Yeah. When Talisa was in the show, she was cheffing it up when she was allowed to. But then that was taken away from her and the job was given to someone else. Oh wow. So she, her being the person who can cook the best, but not being the person assigned to that cooking job,

was really struggling. And saying like, she's watching people do it wrong. That would be me. I would be so annoyed. I'd be like, now cut that this way. No, smaller than that. Diced, not chopped. But I think like the contestants, the people that are there really love anyone that can cook. Also, they love finding out about people. And that's what's happening with Colleen Rooney at the moment.

Okay. Because she's previously been quite like, aside from the stuff that's in the tabloids, you don't really know about her actual life. Yeah. You sort of know about that one case in particular. Yeah. But I think like, especially people who you get to like,

you get a bit out of them and you find out stuff that you wouldn't expect. I think people are warm to them. I can't imagine like people not liking you because of that. But at the same time, people just pick anything in it. That's very nice of you to say. I actually don't agree with you, but I do think that you could not not come out of it very well

Let me tell you something about me Lily when I'm hungry. I'm a piece of shit. I've seen it but still Yeah, I've seen you trying to get your head around some like inedible, like, you know, set catering. And then being like, you're like, why isn't there any Deliveroo in Margate? Actually, there was Deliveroo, but it was... 95 minutes away. It was madness. You're quite good at charity, aren't you? I think I'm getting better at it. You do quite a lot of work in the community.

Well, don't you too? Just last night. That's true actually. I became an ambassador for the Forward Trust, which is an addiction charity. And I went and got interviewed on stage in front of some people about being a drug addict and an alcoholic which was not very nice but I think good. I'm sure you were very good. It was more about what other people get from it you know. Yeah. I don't it's not performance fact, it's quite the opposite.

It's meant to be like very vulnerable and rooted in truth. But it's to be inspiring, right? I guess so. It's just to tell the truth. It's just what we do here as well and what I do in my music. It's all that I really know how to do. Yeah. Just mining for the truth, man, all the time, you know?

Anyway, let's not talk about me. I wanna talk about you and your charity work. I've just become an ambassador for a charity called Work Up, which is supporting young people and young working class people in the arts. Please don't do that. It's too late, I've done it. Oh God, what about our Snappo babies?

We need the work. Don't be helping people from the working classes get a step in. Okay, I promise I'll only help one a year. Okay, that sounds fair. Deal. Sold. Obviously I'm only joking. Yeah, so it's like across all the arts and just like

helping people to get opportunities and yeah, that sort of thing. Does it make you feel good doing things like that? Yeah, I think like, I remember when I was in Youth Theatre, Theatre Royal Stratford East, and people would just come and talk and it just inspires you. And that's why I mentioned about your you speaking and inspiring other people, because I just think like, you always remember that. You always remember the moment where like, someone says something that really clicked with you. And you change something about what you are doing

or have been doing or want to do. Even if you just go home and go, right, I'm gonna write a list. And you're not a person that writes lists. The smallest things can like make those big changes. So I think like, that's the plan. And hopefully I can do make those big changes. So I think like that's the plan and hopefully I can do that for other people. But also like when I was in school,

I was like, and I wanted to be an actor. I didn't know anyone that was an actor. I just knew like out there somewhere people were doing that. And then there was a guy in my school called TJ Tenday who was on Kaching. Do you remember Kaching? It's kind of ringing a bell. It was like a CBBC show. Okay.

About these guys that want to make like a get rich scheme legal. And it takes off. And it's, yeah, it was TJ and Devon, I can't remember his surname, he was in EastEnders. But they, yeah, they were on Kaching. So then suddenly I knew someone who was on TV. And he was in your school, sorry, TJ. He was in my school, yeah, he was two years above me. Okay. So just from that, I was like, oh, it's so possible

because there's someone I literally see like five days a week who's also on the television. And that sort of of showed me that like that was something that was it wasn't a million miles away It was like achievable. I just had to Yeah, so important and I think like maybe my story and telling people That part of this charity and telling them I just came from from East Ham and I went to you there and I went to church drama club and all of those things and just like explaining my journey might inspire someone to do something.

But hopefully they don't beat me to being a Bond villain. It's good when the causes that you work for are rooted in something that rings true or authentic for you. rooted in something that rings true or authentic for you. Mm, yeah. You know, when I've, cause this charity was about addiction and Brian Gordon, the woman that interviewed me, was like, it's really great that you're doing this

cause you know, not many well known people wanna get up on stage and talk about being a drug addict. Funnily enough. But it's funny because addiction or recovery is a journey. So it's not, you're never recovered, you know, like you have made it, you know. So you are getting up on that stage or, you know, being an ambassador and saying like, you know, here I am the proof. Whereas with like addiction, you know, I could fall off any second. So it's quite funny because it's giving like, look at me, I'm like, perfect. But it really

isn't, you know, being perfect. It's recovery is something that is really day by day. I remember you in Margate telling me that you just came from a meeting and outside the guy was like FaceTiming his daughter to be like, look who I'm with. Yeah. And you're like, it's literally anonymous. It's in the title. Yeah, but you don't mind, do you? Kyle, thank you for coming on the show.

Anytime. Well, you're going to have to come back on Monday to do Listen Bitch with me. Oh, okay. I will. I'm going to hold you to that and I'll see you on Monday to talk about fear. Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to Miss Me with Lily Allen and Makita Oliver.

This is a Persephoneca production for BBC Sounds. In the shadows of Glasgow, two crime families rose to power. You're either with the Daniel family or you're with the Lyons family. There's no in between. A brutal war for control of Glasgow's lucrative drug trade that still rages today. Police think it's the work of a criminal gang. Join me, Livy Haydock, as I investigate the battle that shattered the old school rules of crime.

They just slashed, firebombed, terrorising people wherever they went. It's almost off biblical scales. Gangster, the story of the Daniels and the Lions. Listen on BBC Sounds.