As a middle-class woman of a certain age, all I can say is, “Thank you, Gregg Wallace” | Zoe Williams

Gregg Wallace, who was accused of “inappropriate behaviour”, had withdrawn from MasterChef and kept his head down while lawyers were hired – on behalf of production company Banijay UK and for Wallace himself.

At least that’s what everyone assumed was happening.

What happened instead was Wallace unfiltered: He delivered a guilt-free, straight-to-camera Instagram feel on Sunday that really has to be seen to be believed. He didn’t make any specific accusations – he walked around the studio naked except for a sock that covered his penis; that he compared a dish to his aunt’s vagina; that he asked questions about sex, contestants and production staff that were described as “inappropriate” but were actually even stranger – intrusive and childish, as if his higher functions had checked out and his hindbrain was doing all the talking.

However, he didn’t want to focus on all of that: Instead, he pointed out that he had been doing MasterChef for 20 years and had worked with more than 4,000 participants during that time – “all different ages, all different backgrounds, all walks of life,” he said. “Apparently, I read in the paper now, there were 13 complaints during that time.” I guess he asked us to run the numbers: What is 13 as a percentage of 4,000? It’s tiny; 99.7% of the people he has come into contact with do not consider him problematic enough to make a formal complaint. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard the phrase “There are more people who haven’t complained about me than those who have complained about me” as a defense.

It’s not what you’d call watertight, especially considering the further testimony that followed. A former contestant told Sky News that the stories were the “tip of the iceberg” and that the environment on set was “toxic” but he felt forced not to talk about it because he had signed a non-disclosure agreement. Wallace’s lawyers have denied that he engaged in sexually harassing behavior.

Wallace had more to say: “I imagine (the complaints) come from a handful of middle-class women of a certain age, just the famous master chef.” The disdain he expressed at the phrase “women from the Middle Class” poured is so delicious; I can use it for my ringtone. Apparently authentic working class women love it when you ask them what lesbians do in bed and walk around with a sock over their penis.

There was also the implication that this was just sour grapes: if only women of a certain age complain, isn’t it most likely because we know the innuendo isn’t really for us and we feel left out? Yes, that makes perfect sense.

“That’s not right,” Wallace continued. “Can you imagine how many women, contestants, have made sexual comments in 20 years, over 20 years of television? Or sexual innuendos. Can you imagine that?” This is perhaps his strangest defense of all: that He was the victim of a toxic sexualized atmosphere that was attacked day after day by crude, down-to-earth candidates.

The annoying thing is that when a scandal like this breaks out, it never just ends up with the perpetrator; it splashes all over everyone. And well, there are people who should have treated these problems as they arose instead of letting them build up over years. But just the work of figuring out who should have done what and when will attract large numbers of people who had nothing to do with it, and everyone is working hard with managers to prevent men from doing this again in the future do. And I’m willing to bet that a lot of this cleanup is being done by middle-class women of a certain age. I can’t tell you how many meetings I’ve rescheduled with people who had been canceled for crisis management simply because of the news that Russell Brand may be a sex offender (which he denies).

But I’ll still enjoy this moment: that he said the quiet part out loud; I tried to make a combination of age, gender and class sufficient criteria to dismiss us as irrelevant noise. At that dawn it was lucky to be alive, but to be a middle-class woman of a certain age was heavenly.

Zoe Williams is a columnist for the Guardian

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