Gregg Wallace has let his true character shine through for all to see - Christa Ackroyd

It is essentially a film about bullying, about pointing the finger of blame at a good girl and older sister who has been singled out because she is different. And strong. And not afraid to show it. Even though it takes courage and potential isolation to take on the man in question.

It is basically the back story as to how the Wicked Witch of the West from the original 1939 Hollywood classic, The Wizard of Oz and the book before it, came to be demonised as wicked. When she wasn’t.

When In fact she was brave and defiant and cleverer and more powerful than anyone around her, which made the Wizard feel undermined and very small indeed. And it is magnificent.

Like Frozen before it, the main characters blow as differently as the winds of Kansas. It means if your girl is a girlie girl then they are almost certainly team Glinda. Pink is the order of the day. And what’s wrong with that?

If your girl associates more with strong defiance and taking on the world no matter what, then Elphaba is your woman.

But the moral of the story is (so far because this is only Act 1) that the two together are stronger. That pink and green go together.

That Elphaba, demonstrably different because of her ‘greenness’, is no more wicked than anyone. In fact it is she who has the morals and strength to fight for the underdog, or in this case the goat (see the film and you will understand).

Yet in doing so she is judged and then outcast because she dares to stand up to the Wizard, who is in fact all smoke and mirrors and is no more a wizard than the monkeys he surrounds himself with for protection.

Indeed, the man behind the curtain is simply a magician, who has miraculously managed to hoodwink his subjects into believing he is all powerful by using his position to create an illusion, until that illusion is destroyed by someone who sees right through it.

And calls it out. And for those who know me you know exactly where this is going.

I don’t need to throw brickbats at Greg Wallace. He has done that for himself.

I don’t need to stand up for the women who have spoken out about his alleged barrow boy behaviour. They are quite capable of standing up for themselves.

I don’t need to excuse it. There is no excuse. His behaviour of the last couple of decades has been questioned. But it is his behaviour of the past few days that has proved his critics absolutely right.

Because, and here is the rub, the man behind the mask has been revealed by the man himself. And proves that no matter what you say, no matter what strength it takes to say it, there will always be some who try to turn the issues women have back onto women themselves.

The term in gaslighting. But guess what we can see straight through it. Because we have lived it.

I am not going to detail the allegations made against Mr Wallace. Nor am I going to join the clamour in suggesting it is simply the woke brigade out to stop banter and a bit of fun.

Greg Wallace has ended his chances of any sympathy from me with one simple phrase… it’s all the fault of ‘women of a certain age’. In doing so he has self inflicted the fatal wound.

He has let his true character shine through for all to see. The convivial mask has slipped.

And I care not whether he says he was angry when he made his pathetic little video in which he condemned and attempted to pigeon hole the women who have complained about him.

When someone is angry the veneer they have so often cultivated falls away leaving them exposed and allowing others to see what’s really going on.

And so it’s team Elphaba for me this time and every day of the week. Why? Can’t I take a joke? Can’t I have a laugh?

Am I such a snowflake that every bit of ribald humour offends me? Not a bit of it. It depends entirely on whether it is used to create an atmosphere where women are so undermined that they are afraid to call it out.

Not because they are weak, but because they know that the culture surrounding them will so often turn it around and suggest it is their problem.

So let me say this as a ‘woman of a certain age’. We have been around the block enough to not give a damn about speaking out when it is time to do so.

We have earned the right to say it as it is and no longer have the fear that somehow doing so will end our careers or leave us isolated. Because along the way we have seen too much and gathered enough female allies like us to stay silent.

And yes we know what is coming next. It will be all our fault, we are too sensitive, too old, too bitter, too whatever mud you care to sling at us, to be taken seriously. But know this, we ‘women of a certain age’ won’t stand for it. Because we don’t have to.

And we care not what others may think because we remember the times when we should have spoken out but didn’t. So now we can and will. In fact it is our duty to do so for those women following on behind.

There are many questions to be answered amidst the storm of the Greg Wallace debacle. One of which is why on earth should contestants need to sign a non disclosure agreement banning them from speaking about their experiences on the show?

That’s if it is all sweetness and light and just a bit of fun. But know one thing, the warning signs were there.

In 2014 a snippet in Alan’s Carr’s Chatty Man TV show was seemingly removed when Wallace claimed two women could never host MasterChef because cooking was a ‘ blokey thing’.

Oh really? Try telling that to every woman who has tried to juggle work and home life and spent hours slaving away at the kitchen stove as well. How I wish the Chatty Man producers had kept the comment in.

It would have saved us a lot of angst and navel gazing this past decade.

Anyway enough. Like the film Wicked there is a part two to come.

Whether Elphaba gets resolution and is redeemed in the eyes of the good people remains to be seen. I suspect she will.

Did my granddaughter’s love it? They absolutely did. It was almost three hours of spectacle, enchantment and entertainment and to them it was just a wonderful day with their friends at the cinema.

But I hope the message sinks in now and in the future, that to be strong as a woman may not be easy, that it is our duty as women to hold each other up and hold those to account who would wish us to fail. And that we are heading in the right direction.

I am not sure we are yet quite able to say mission accomplished. But like the Wizard of Oz, I am presuming those who would laugh at us, those who would ridicule us, those who would seek to brand us as troublemakers or even ‘wicked’ will get their comeuppance in the end.

I await part 2 with interest.