Proud new dad Gregg Wallace on the secrets of Sid’s birth!
On the show today our guest Gregg Wallace opened up about his bonny new baby Sid - also revealing he could be persuaded to have more children! The thrilled new father also broke down as he recalled his eldest son’s words at the hospital after the birth.
Speaking to our panel he admitted: “I haven’t done any sleepless nights yet. None at all. I’m very fortunate that my wonderful mother-in-law Rina… that she lives with us. I’m not at home all the time as my job takes me all over the place.”
Asked if he was a hands-on daddy despite this, he said: “I change nappies, I feed and I wind. Yeah, I love it. I’ve been weed on three times!"
Gregg explained: “My wife is very, very old-fashioned. We had a good chat about what our roles would be when the baby came along and it was decided I’m provider and I should stay the provider. I’m not arguing the pluses and minuses but it works really, really well. That was it. It was decided I should carry on working.”
He went on to say of his wife Anna’s family: “They are southern Italians. They are very old-fashioned. When I say my mother-in-law lives with us, a lot of people raise their eyebrows. But we have father-in-law on the way as well… you marry the whole family.”
But he added, with a smile: “I go home, and there’s good food on the table, there’s bottles of wine. There’s a happy vibe. I really like it.”
On his baby’s name, he explained: “Sid was my Grandad’s name, from Peckham in South East London. Millwall supporter like me. My baby boy is Sid Massimo, Massimo is my father-in-law’s name. So, you have got the working class London and the Italian.”
He also opened up to our panel about his wife's struggles with getting pregnant, saying it took years of trying: “Yeah [we tried for a couple of years]. Everybody was saying to us, ‘You’ve got to relax’ and we said, ‘Shut up... we’ve been relaxing for two years!’ But actually we had a month in Italy when we were doing the book… Obviously, if you want to conceive, Italian sunshine, loads of pasta and a bottle of red wine...” - Saucy!
Speaking about being an older father, he welled up as he admitted: “I was a single dad. I bought my children up on my own, they are now 25 and 22 and they were at the hospital when their baby brother was born. Do you know what my son said? He said, ‘Look, the little boy Sid is a LUCKY boy’. And I said, ‘But his dad’s old?’ My eldest boy said, ‘That’s alright dad, he’s got me’.”
Gregg's new cookbook
Talking about his new cookbook, written with his wife Anna, he said: “We collected recipes from all the family and had a really good time putting it all together… we rented a villa for a month and came back with a cookbook and a baby boy!”
"Print this!"
On the recent jibes following his social media comments about printing out his wife’s pictures, he explained: “They are really good photographs my wife takes. Because I’m old-fashioned, I like real photographs. So, I put on there the first time, I said, ‘That’s really nice darling, can you print it’? And then, ‘Oh I like that one, can you print it. In the end I was just saying ‘Print it, print it’. And someone picked up on it and it went viral.”
Our panellists then presented Gregg with some pictures!
Are there more babies to come?
On whether he’s tempted to have more babies, he confessed: “I did say to Anna I wasn’t sure. Because by the time you are my age, normally your children are grown up and you can have time with your wife again. I’m going to be in my 70s when Sid is 20. Mate, I tell you what these Italians, I’ve got to praise them. Honestly, big, big into family. What I got Anna to promise was two weeks away on our own every year, otherwise I’m never going to have my wife back at my age.
“We said only one but honestly now, I’ve really can’t say!"
Want to keep up with the latest from our ladies? Follow Loose Women on