Gregg Wallace: 'My Saturday' Telegraph day-in-the-life piece has made him a figure of fun - I feel sad for him

It's easy - and let's face it good fun - to join in with the shred-ripping, and I've definitely been guilty of that, while feasting on various wags' takes. But underneath it all there's a sadness that I can't get away from. What at first was merely risible has now, over several days, coalesced into something more melancholy. And I think it's because Gregg Wallace has clearly never grown up.

Gregg is on telly a lot. He's probably pretty wealthy. He is 59 years old, is married and has a number of children. And yet there's the air of being desperate to impress people. Within six lines he's making sure that we know he's a serious reader and that he has his own health app. Every paragraph is then bragging, from being let into a gym early, to - astonishingly, seeming to be an "amateur historian" because of a computer game set in the past. These are teenage boasts, very superficially impressive to the person who is making them, but to anyone else who lives in a real world, with real children and a real job, patently ridiculous. That's why people have found them funny. But they are the words of a man who has never grown up emotionally. It's like taking the worst parts of the modern male, clinging on to youth and status symbols over shared humanity, and parroting them back as boasts.

Why is he so keen on posting his daily schedule on X? It reeks of insecurity - and insecurity that, instead of playing computer games, he'd do well to talk to someone about.

And all this comes as, being a TV name, Gregg is endorsing a mobile phone firm in a Valentine's advertising campaign. As seen in the picture above, Gregg has been pictured in a real bed of roses, ahead of flowers being given away for free on Sunday on the South Bank in London. It's coupled with the fact that researchers found Valentine’s Day is nearly £100 more expensive than it was 10 years ago, as a bouquet of flowers, meal for two, card, bottle of perfume and a box of chocolates would have set you back a total of £199 then, and now lovebirds can expect to fork out £281.

Smarty Mobile will be giving away red roses to would-be romantics at Observation Point on Southbank at the Cost of Loving pop-up, from 12pm to 3pm on Sunday, February 11. In the press surrounding the picture Gregg said: “I’m a huge romantic and I take any opportunity to celebrate the people I love. A token of love is hugely important and no one should get ripped off on an occasion like Valentine’s Day. So I’m thrilled to be helping Smarty Mobile tackle the cost of loving with free roses this weekend.”

But sadly Gregg's own words in that article are as unromantic as they come. I hope he finds some happiness, but possibly some self-awareness would help first. Someone sit him down and have a quiet word. Put an arm round him. Tell him to think twice before speaking. And tell him sometimes it's OK just to get on with things without telling everyone else about it.