Gregg Wallace has spoken out again after his bombshell interview, calling for the "space to heal" following a string of misconduct allegations and a battle with suicidal thoughts. The former MasterChef host, 60, stepped back from the hit BBC cooking competition last year after a number of historic complaints surfaced, triggering an external investigation by the show's production company, Banjay UK.

Posting on Instagram this weekend, Wallace said it had been “hard” to speak publicly about his mental health and family struggles, but insisted it “felt right”. “Right now, I don’t want to add anything more. I’ve opened my heart, and that has to be enough,” he wrote. “There will be a lot of noise, I get that; but I won’t be joining in. I need space to heal and to be with the people who know who I really am. I just wanted to let you know that there are no further comments at this time.”

Wallace’s fresh statement follows explosive comments he made in a Daily Mail interview, where he revealed the toll the scandal had taken on him behind the scenes.He told the publication: “Nobody should be left on their own to face” a storm of complaints.

Opening up about his darkest moments, Wallace added: “It’s very difficult to explain the pressure unless you’ve been through it. I thought about suicide all the time – ‘is my insurance up to date? Will Anna (Wallace’s wife) get some money? She doesn’t deserve this, it would be better if I wasn’t here’.”

The former greengrocer, who first rose to fame as a MasterChef judge, said he felt forced to speak out last year after the rumour mill spiralled.

He said: “I had to speak out because people were saying what they liked about me and it wasn’t true,” after he was slammed for claiming on social media that the complaints were made by “a handful of middle-class women of a certain age”.

The disgraced star claimed he was left feeling abandoned after the BBC failed to reach out to him when the allegations emerged, admitting the “feeling of being under attack, of isolation, of abandonment was overwhelming”.

“You’re watching yourself get personally ripped apart, criticised, accused of all sorts of stuff over and over again. You’re thinking, ‘this isn’t true, it isn’t true, what’s coming next?’" he said.

“You don’t sleep, your chest races, your body feels like it’s shutting down because it can’t cope with the levels of stress. You feel really dirty and horrible because everybody is saying you’re a pervert.”

However, he strongly denied more serious accusations, insisting that claims he groped crew members were “absolutely not true”.

His lawyers previously told the BBC “it is entirely false that he engages in behaviour of a sexually harassing nature”.

Meanwhile, it has been confirmed that food critic Grace Dent will join John Torode to judge the upcoming 20th series of Celebrity MasterChef.