Penny Lancaster has spoken out for the first time about her own experiences of working with Gregg Wallace.

The former Loose Women panellist found herself at the centre of headlines last week, after it was announced that Gregg would be stepping away from MasterChef amid an investigation into complaints made to the BBC about his past conduct.

Following this, Penny’s husband Sir Rod Stewart fired off a statement on Instagram, writing: “You humiliated my wife when she was on the show, but you had that bit cut out didn’t you?”

Blasting Gregg as a “tubby, bald-headed, ill-mannered bully”, the Maggie May singer concluded: “Karma got ya.”

On Thursday’s edition of Loose Women, Penny admitted she hadn’t been made aware that the crooner would be posting about her time on MasterChef until later.

She explained: “I didn’t realise my husband had sent that post out until it was out. And of course, you can imagine the influx of inquiries there were.”

Penny added: “I most definitely was witness and victim to some of the bullying and harassment behaviour of Gregg Wallace and, unfortunately, a lot of those involved in the production team were also witness to that.”

Penny told the panel: “I think my husband, when he heard people talking about his disturbing behaviour, he thought needed to say something.”

In fact, she didn’t find out about Sir Rod’s post until much later, as she was serving jury service at the time and was therefore “off the grid”.

Gregg faced a widespread backlash in the wake of the news, after he referred to his accusers as “middle-class women of a certain age” on Instagram.

He later apologised for this in an additional social media post.

The BBC is continuing to air the current series of Masterchef: The Professionals – in which Gregg appears – as planned, but has pulled two planned celebrity specials from its Christmas schedule.

Loose Women airs every weekday from 12.30pm on ITV1.