THE BBC is facing a fresh MasterChef controversy after it emerged that presenter Grace Dent is the Grand Wizard of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan.
The theoretically innocuous cookery show has been thrown into more turmoil after footage emerged of Dent in full regalia addressing a crowd of several thousand Klansmen in front of rows of burning crosses, although she says she has ‘no recollection’ of the incident.
BBC director general Tim Davie said: “F**king Grace. She said it was just a ‘social club’ where ‘like-minded people’ get together to ‘share views’.
“The producers should have realised when she came in still in the hood a couple of years ago, but she said it was just over-enthusiastic Covid masking and she definitely wasn’t a Deep South white supremacist.
“In her defence, she was never anything less than professional on set and never once suggested a lynching, even when a contestant’s red mullet ballotine was unacceptably overdone.”
In a statement Dent said: “At no point did the BBC bring up my Klan membership with me, nor is there any suggestion I discriminated against any contestants on any grounds other than the delectability of their raspberry meringues.”
She added: “The Guardian never made a fuss. They call it ‘diversity of viewpoint’.”
