Shamed Gregg Wallace returns to flogging fruit and veg decades after greengrocer career

 Gregg Wallace is back pushing fruit and veg - years after making his name as a greengrocer.

The shamed MasterChef host, 61, is plugging veg boxes on social media.

He posted an Instagram video to promote The Veg Box Company and gushed: “Proper quality, farm fresh produce delivered to your door.”

The star rose to fame on the BBC from being a Covent Garden market trader known as Gregg the Veg.

He founded George Allan’s Greengrocers in 1989 and built it into a business with a £7.5 million turnover.

But it was not all plain sailing.

In his 2012 autobiography, Life on a Plate, Gregg admitted: “We were owed millions and we owed millions to wholesalers in the market.”

He also insisted he “didn’t have to pick up all the bills personally” after Allan’s failed since it was a limited company.

The telly presenter also rubbished the idea that fame had played a part in the firm’s downfall.

“Many of the traders had joined forces and said they refused to employ me,” he wrote

“It wasn’t fair but they blamed me for George Allan’s closure. They thought I’d got too fancy and big for my boots, being on telly now, and I let it all go to pot.

“Nothing could’ve been further from the truth, though. It’s always the way: the last one out to turn off the lights, gets the blame.”

Earlier this week Gregg said sorry for his behaviour on Masterchef in an online post.

He admitted he had been ‘stupid, defensive and arrogant’ following his sacking.

Wallace claimed the show’s directors would ‘whip us up with energy and excitement’, his job was to ‘put contestants at ease’ and he did it the ‘only way’ he knew how.

“I genuinely thought everyone thought it was hilarious,” he said.

“I saw the people around me making these jokes and assumed they were a normal, encouraged part of workplace behaviour, and that when I did it it would be perceived the same way.”