Gregg Wallace has announced his departure from Inside The Factory (Picture: BBC/instagram/greggwallace)
Gregg Wallace is stepping down from hosting Inside The Factory after seven years to focus on raising his three-year-old son Sid who has autism.
The TV presenter, who will continue to judge MasterChef, has already filmed upcoming episodes of the factual programme which sees him delve into how goods are made.
Speaking on Gaby Roslin’s BBC Radio London show, Wallace, 58, explained that he needs to step away to care for Sid, who is non-verbal in addition to his autism and needs additional support with education.
The television personality, who shares Sid with his wife Anne-Marie Sterpini, who is 21 years his junior, told the programme that while his son is a ‘lovely, lovely little boy’ with a ‘wonderful mother’, parenting is ‘not easy’.
He added that Inside The Factory involves a lot of travelling away from his family as he visits factories across the country.
After seven years on the programme, Wallace is leaving to focus on looking after his three-year-old son Sid (Picture: BBC)
Sid is non-verbal and has also been diagnosed with autism (Picture: Instagram)
Wallace continued: ‘So I’ve made a decision that I’m actually not going to do Inside The Factory any more.
‘It’s a good time to stop doing it because there’s actually 12 episodes in the can… so I wouldn’t have been filming for a while anyway so it just seemed like a good idea to stop it.’
The Celebrity MasterChef and MasterChef: The Professionals judge also shed some light on what it’s like being a parent to a child with autism.
‘Imagine a child that you can’t threaten or bribe and that’s basically what you’ve got,’ he said.
‘You’ve got a little boy who’s cuddly and happy and naughty, like any little boy would be, but he can’t speak, he can’t talk to you, so he gets frustrated because he finds it difficult to tell you what exactly it is he needs.
Wallace and his wife are on the hunt to find Sid the perfect school (Picture: Instagram)
‘Right now, we need to find education for him and I can’t just leave that to Anna – that’s a big, big decision.
‘I mean, all parents worry about the schools that children will go to. Ours is even more highlighted because of poor little Sid’s issues.’
Wallace first revealed his son’s autism diagnosis during an appearance on Loose Women last July.
When asked what signs he and his wife had spotted, he shared how Sid ‘wasn’t answering his name, and wasn’t playing peekaboo,’ despite being able to walk and run around.
The TV star continued: ‘He’s got something called global development delay, which means he is not speaking.
‘But he is lovely, he is cuddly… If he wants something, he grabs your hand.’
He encouraged parents to ‘go and see someone’ if they believed their child may have an issue.
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The BBC has said that a new presenter for Inside The Factory will be announced in due course.
Jack Bootle, the corporation’s head of specialist factual, said Wallace has been ‘integral to the success’ of the series and has brought ‘humour, intelligence and genuine curiosity to one of the BBC’s biggest returning factual brands’.
He praised: ‘I’d like to thank him for all his hard work and commitment to the programme.’
Inside The Factory presented by Wallace, Cherry Healey and Ruth Goodman will launch on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer in April.
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Don’t worry, he’s not leaving MasterChef.
