Gregg Wallace Quotes

I’m very close to Michel Roux Jr, so my favourite restaurant in the world is Le Gavroche in Mayfair.

The game of love, in my opinion, is a lottery.

I’ve always been a worrier.

Well, I don’t know about my mum; I think she is almost Buddhist in her approach to life in that she’s not going to work very hard at any particular thing and she’s not going to let any particular thing trouble her. I’m very different. I aspire to things and I worry about things.

I don’t believe in starving yourself three times a week, I don’t believe in not having carbs.

On ‘Masterchef’ I’m always a big fan of the puddings. But I have to confess, as a child I absolutely loved butterscotch angel delight. My mum used to make it in huge bowls. She’s one of the worst cooks ever, bless her. The best thing she did was a chilli con carne, and that was still terrible.

As soon as my clothes come back from the laundry I hang them up on the left-hand side of the wardrobe and take clothes to wear from the right, so they’re constantly rotating.

In my romantic Shangri-La, I’m loved for me. They accept my faults and think, ‘He works too hard, he can be difficult, but he’s great.’

There are days when I lack motivation – but I still workout.

Sadly, in my work on shows like ‘Eat Well For Less?’ I know that people ARE misinformed about what’s on their plate. Many would be shocked to discover their Friday fish and chips is close to 1,400 calories.

When you go out for a good meal, chances are that there will be a deep fat fryer in the kitchen. Every Michelin star restaurant will have one.

I really like ‘Come Dine With Me’ and ‘Eating With My Ex.’ Both shows have my two favourite things: people and food.

I was Top Celeb. There’s only a short step I think from being Top Celeb to hosting it.

Having my baby boy made me want to be fit and strong.

I once left my wife and child in a hotel in Mexico to fly to Guatemala in this tiny plane for two days to see the rainforests. Guatemala had just finished a civil war and my hotel door had five or six bolts on it; I was locking myself into a safe vault.

When I was at my biggest I was having a daily fry up, fish and chips once per week, takeaway a couple more times and drinking beer nearly every day.

I haven’t been invited to anyone’s for dinner since the show began. I like eating with friends in restaurants instead. You all choose what to eat, have a starter, main and dessert, and then you go home.

I’m a huge fan of curries, chillies and stews and it is still possible to lose weight and eat hearty meals.

There are two things that happen when there is a recession. One, more people watch telly and two, people buy more raw foodstuffs, instead of processed foods.

You can’t get a phone any more that just makes phone calls. And that’s all I want to use it for.

Spending time in Soweto, and looking at the issues, and experiencing the poverty first-hand, had an enormous impact. I was brought up in a council house in South East London – I didn’t have a privileged or wealthy upbringing – but looking at the scale of the problems there just left me dumbfounded.

I would make a tough law that would force all supermarkets to source at least 15 per cent of their fresh produce from a very small radius of the store.

If people ate local and seasonal food they’d eat far better and cheaper foods and it would help farming in this country. There are far too many imported vegetables.

I once told a white South African woman that her food was as weak as the Rand, and she complained of racism. Now I watch what I say.

Don’t cut out things you like – it will just make you miserable.

I’m a real security addict and I’ve always channelled far too much of my life into accumulating money.

We don’t like to say it, but TV is a hugely image-conscious industry. I know it might sometimes look like I don’t do anything, but I work very hard, and part of that is looking as well as you can. It’s an advert about who you are, what sort of person you are.

Our nation was built on chips and Spam fritters.

I used to go to the pub every day and drink five pints of beer and then think, ‘What is it that’s making me put on weight?’

Don’t want to be so fat? Then eat fewer calories – it really is that simple.

I always eat breakfast as I’ve just come out of gym and I’m ravenous for protein.

The most important thing for a date is not to prepare anything too complex because you’re likely to be a little bit too stressed. Also, she’s there to see you and not your plate of food. Spend as little time in the kitchen as possible.

I once bought a 45 ice cream. I had to do it. They had a 100-year-old vinegar drizzled across the top. And that was worth it.

Even though I have a warm, nostalgic view of spam fritters, if you gave them to me now, I would probably find them absolutely disgusting.

I hate food evangelists.

A safari is just a magical thing, the winelands in South Africa are beautiful.

Mum bought our dinners from Bejams, a frozen food centre. We had a huge chest freezer, back in the 70s and we filled it chockablock with frozen stuff.

My loves in life are food, history and rugby. I’d love to be a history professor or a rugby player but I prefer rugby and my career would end by the time I was 30, leaving me enough time to go and study history.

I’m a technophobe, I just don’t understand it.

If I have to fly economy, there is no way I am flying more than two and a half hours. I am just not doing long-haul economy flights. I did it once to the Caribbean and never again.

I don’t want lots of someones. I want to be with that special someone.

I had a poor upbringing. We lived in a rented house with no bathroom and an outside toilet and that, combined with the fact that I left home at 15 without any serious education, has always made me feel like I have to compete.

I think that Hardeep Singh Kohli is the winner of ‘MasterChef’ that never was.

On ‘MasterChef’ the critique always is about the food.

A lot of people have what they call ‘sofa time,’ but it just doesn’t exist in my world.

I actually think I’m lucky. Because blokes who lose their hair at a later age, in their thirties and forties, get hung up about it. Because they had hair and then lose it. But I’ve never had that problem.

Every household down my road in Peckham, south-east London, stunk of deep-fat frying and I’m sure every working-class home around the country was the same. How would you have done chips and Spam fritters without a deep-fat fryer?

Everybody loves a picnic in the sunshine. It was always so magical when we were kids.

I’ve changed my own lifestyle since a doctor warned me my cholesterol levels meant I was in danger of a heart attack.

I’ve always made friends with people who have either money or influence and it’s something that I’ve struggled to let go of because I’ve been so needy in the past.

You don’t have to be uncomfortable or hungry to lose weight. You just have to learn what foods you can eat.

I think it’s a class thing. There are people that would honestly think Pret a Manger is healthier than Greggs. Why?

I don’t feel comfortable sitting by a pool with other British people who may just gawk and take photographs of me.

I hate barbecues in the U.K., they’re always put together by people who don’t cook.

I want to be on ‘Love Island’ because I want to show how toned I’ve gotten and I also want to increase my Instagram following and get a clothing deal with Uniqlo.

If I’m doing a pavlova, for example, I need a recipe as I can’t remember it well.

I wish ‘I, Claudius’ had never ended back in 1976. That was the best TV show the world has ever seen – apart from ‘MasterChef’ of course.

I made a conscious decision to cut down on fried and high sugar foods, as well as booze – which helped me lose weight.

I might have a chocolate bar on the go for energy.

I have a very spartan flat in London, and when they see it people say: ‘Why don’t you make it more homely?’ The reason is that it’s just a place to sleep when I’m working.

I’ve been portrayed as a womanising football hooligan, but I don’t recognise that person.

The main thing to remember is that things like deep-fat-fried foods, or the delicious sugary buttery cakes like Mary Berry bakes, are treats.

I download music, I don’t buy CDs any more, but I still buy DVDs.

You know, I’ve been bald since I was 18. I started losing my hair at 17 and I’ve been completely bald since 20 years old.

I don’t do this watching telly thing. I realise I am strange.

I learned that South Africa is the most diverse country I have ever seen. The diversity is just striking. The food, the people, the culture, the look and the feel, for that all to be one country.

There’s some terrible food on ‘Come Dine With Me’ and that creates some great moments.