The BBC makes careers – it must remind stars like Gregg Wallace it can break them, too

Rather like one of its long-running soaps, hardly a month seems to go by without the BBC developing a new, scandalous storyline – about itself. The latest challenge to Mr Davie’s new doctrine comes in the unappetising form of Gregg Wallace, one of the BBC’s more versatile frontmen – but unfortunately, so it is suggested, a man with a bit too much front. Mr Wallace pleads that he “wasn’t in a good headspace” when he issued his defiant Instagram rebuttal and says he will be taking “time out”. One of the more disquieting aspects of what has become known recently is that the BBC received complaints about Mr Wallace’s behaviour as far back as 2017 – and he was given a “talking to” by BBC executives in 2018 about his “unacceptable and unprofessional” conduct on the show Impossible Celebrities. The cases are extremely varied but the one thing that they have in common – from Jeremy Clarkson punching a producerto Jay Blades’ appearance in court on charges of controlling and coercive behaviour towards his wife – is how the power of the presenter and their standards conspire to inflict harm on one of the UK’s few internationally renowned “brands”.