Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Gary Lineker has exposed the truth about television

(Credit: Getty images)

The Gary Lineker debacle has exposed the breathtaking historical and political ignorance of the supposedly educated. Lineker’s suspension – and subsequent return – has also demonstrated (as if we didn’t know it) the power of the managerial class establishment. But the transmission of Match of the Day last Saturday sans Gary and his co-mutineers revealed something else. The truth about much modern television is that the percentage of actual content is dwarfed by the amount of waffle.

As the row rumbled on, the BBC was contractually obliged to run the day’s football highlights package. Without the banter, chat and flimflam Lineker is paid £1.3 million a year for, this clocked in at a mere 20 minutes. For some reason, there was no title sequence or ‘iconic’ theme tune either, which was a relief for me as I can’t hear it without getting an earworm of the lyrics of the hymn version we sang at school. (‘Why don’t you put your trust in Jesus, and ask him to come in?’)

Television is awash with hours and hours of snail-paced blether

Next weekend, normal service will resume: Lineker and his chums will be back – telling you what you’re about to see, what you’re seeing right now, or what you have just seen. What is coming up, what you might have missed, flashbacks to what you saw five minutes ago. Still to come. Already tonight.

Match of the Day isn’t, of course, the only show in which this fluff predominates. Presenters often hand over to presenters, like a giggling hall of mirrors. This is all mostly delivered with the overexcited zizz of the latter-day Blue Peter, the mirthless laugh of the children’s entertainer or nursery assistant. Even continuity announcers speak in this pally, overly-bright register, as if they’re about to say ‘Single file, quicksticks, coats on hooks!’

This phenomenon crept up on us over decades, but went into overdrive in the late noughties.

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