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Dillion Passage opens up on Joe Exotic "companionship"

By Neil Wilkes, Editor-in-chief

Published: April 13 2020 | 10:43

Last updated: April 13 2020 | 23:02

Joe Exotic's husband Dillon Passage reveals that his marriage to the Tiger King star started off as "a companionship".

Joe Exotic's husband Dillon Passage has revealed that his marriage to the Tiger King star started off as a "companionship".

The eccentric zookeeper married Passage - 33 years his junior - just two months after his previous husband Travis Maldonado accidentally killed himself.

Speaking to People magazine, 24-year-old Passage insisted that the pair met at the right time in both of their lives.

"Joe had a long conversation with me whenever he proposed," Passage recalled. "He was like, 'I need somebody who's going to be here for me, You may not be in love with me right now, but you will be.'

"It was like a companionship at first and then I just really saw his true colours and the kind person he was.

"I was in a bad place in my life and Joe really was helping me out and getting me healthy. And it was good to have somebody who I felt could take my loneliness away and bring me out of my depression and be there for me no matter what. And Joe made me feel like that."

Exotic is currently serving a 22-year prison term for animal cruelty and an alleged plot to murder his rival Carole Baskin.

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Gregg Wallace admits he has "thought about suicide"

Former MasterChef presenter Gregg Wallace has admitted that he "thought about suicide all the time" as the allegations against him mounted last year.

The 60-year-old stepped down from the cookery franchise last November after multiple women accused him of inappropriate behaviour on set over the years - including serious allegations that he groped crew members.

While Wallace has conceded that he sometimes may have made bawdy jokes, he has categorically denied ever knowingly bullying or sexually harassing anyone.

The BBC launched an investigation into Wallace - during which he was diagnosed with autism - and is due to publish the results, which are largely expected to find in his favour, next month.

In an interview with the Daily Mail, Wallace claimed that as the stories about him started to break last November, he received no contact from the BBC at all for the first few days.

"Nobody should be left on their own to face something like this," he said. "It's very difficult to explain the pressure unless you've been through it.

"I thought about suicide all the time: 'Is my insurance up to date? Will Anna (Wallace's wife of nine years) get some money? She doesn't deserve this. It would be better if I wasn't here'."

He continued: 'I hadn't slept for four days. The feeling of being under attack, of isolation, of abandonment was overwhelming. Nobody from the BBC contacted me once these stories started breaking – absolutely nobody at all.

"News channels were updating hourly with new allegations. There was a tidal wave of abuse on social media, a dozen reporters outside the gate. You're watching yourself get personally ripped apart, criticised, accused of all sorts of stuff over and over again. You're thinking, 'This isn't true. It isn't true. What's coming next?'

"You don't sleep. Your chest races. Your body feels like it's shutting down because it can't cope with the levels of stress. You feel really dirty and horrible because everybody is saying you're a pervert. Women – big, respected personalities I thought I had a decent relationship with - were attacking me.

"Look, I don't want to make myself sound innocent because, I've come to realise, I must have offended a lot of people over the years when you look at the number of complaints.

"But people on MasterChef are in a very stressed situation and many of them are going to leave disappointed with shattered dreams. I think there has been a lot of misunderstanding of my intention, and so many of the complaints are from so long ago. There's a difference between what they think I said and what was actually said."

The series of MasterChef that Wallace filmed with John Torode before the allegations surfaced remains on the shelf until the results of the investigation are published, while a new celebrity series has now been filmed with food critic Grace Dent as a new co-host.