Just when you thought you couldn’t handle any more depressing news, Gary Lineker has started dropping hints that his days in the Match of the Day presenter’s chair may be drawing to an end. I know. It really puts things into perspective.
‘I’m ancient,’ Lineker said, Aslan-like, on the latest Match of the Day podcast, ‘my time is nearly up.’ The most powerful man at the BBC – and football’s most famous Gary – then seemed to anoint his successor by giving the nod to the endlessly anodyne former Tottenham and Newcastle midfielder Jermaine Jenas.
‘He’s probably drifting toward my role,’ Lineker told presumably astonished co-hosts Alan Shearer and Micah Richards. ‘He’s doing it really well, doing The One Show.’
Will that be enough to see the famous torch passed to Jenas? You’d have to say on the strength of recent evidence – in which Lineker apparently does what he likes and the BBC capitulates – it probably will.
But how about exploring another option, one that might end the awful fist Beeb presenters are increasingly making of disguising seemingly uniform liberal political sensibilities in the name of impartiality? An option that at the same time might enable all of us to put down our cudgels in the never-ending culture war?
Why not make the appointment of plum BBC presenting roles like Gary’s the gift of the government of the day? It’s not as crazy as it sounds.
If we’re agreed, as we appear to be, that BBC impartiality is no longer important – which is what the whole issue of Lineker being allowed to keep his BBC presenter role after likening the language used by the UK government to that of Germany in the 1930s was really about – then why not just make it official?
On the issues that matter most – Brexit, immigration, the climate, the NHS, what is funny, what salves might best restore our national economy to vigorous good health – at least give the British people the brand of propaganda for which we voted.
Granted, it might not have been easy in the early days of David Cameron’s Tory government, much less now, to boot out a whole roster of so-called BBC talent, not least because of the scarcity of centre-right leaning British media personalities to install as replacements.
Realistically, who could present Match of the Day post-Lineker that non-metropolitan dwelling, libertarian British voters could take to their hearts? The high profile conspiracy theorist Matt Le Tissier? Hmm. It’s possible, I suppose. Certainly, he scored better goals than Lineker.
A preferable option surely would be the Leave-voting ex-Arsenal defender Sol Campbell – who if memory serves once considered running for mayor of London. Yes, if not to Jermaine, then give it to Sol. Who could object to that?
But what about the other flagship BBC presenting roles? If you were going to have a clear out of perceived liberals, it’s helpful, I suppose, that the likes of Emily Maitlis, Jon Sopel, Lewis Goodall, Nish Kumar and Andrew Marr have recently all of their own volition decided to take their wares elsewhere.
But if you wanted to go further, say by getting rid of, to pluck a few names entirely at random, Mishal Hussein, Evan Davies, Amol Rajan, Huw Edwards, Naga Munchetty, Nick Robinson, Simon Schama, Dan Snow, Stacey Dooley, Ian Hislop and Paul Merton, simply because – fairly or unfairly – you believed they vigorously hated Tories and/or Brexit, and were as a result doing everything in their power to push onto the public their own political biases, then who on Earth would you put in their place?
Simon Cowell is a one-time high profile Conservative supporter. Could he revolutionise the Today programme the way he revolutionised both television talent shows and the British pop industry? We’ll never find out unless we give it a whirl. He could hardly be more irritating than Rajan.
Likewise, would Brexit-supporter Sir Michael Caine as a team head improve the now truly turgid Have I Got News for You? Perhaps with Joan Collins in the presenter’s chair? Surely it couldn’t be worse for ratings than replacing Sue Barker with Paddy McGuinness as presenter of A Question of Sport.
Obviously, I’m not being entirely serious. Officially politically-appointed broadcasters is the reserve of dictatorships. Besides, there simply aren’t enough right-leaning presenters to keep the lights on at the Beeb.
That said, it’s inarguable the BBC’s inability to affect impartiality over the last two decades has led directly to the creation and very rapid growth of the centre-right GB News channel – increasingly now a natural home for British viewers frustrated by never seeing their own political opinions and worldview reflected back at them by the state broadcaster.
Unless the BBC does make a genuine return to the unassailable high-ground of impartiality, then inevitably it will become less and less distinguishable from every other broadcaster, including the likes of Fox News and CNN in America, that seemingly will tell us whatever it is they believe we want to hear in order to hold our attention. In that scenario, there is obviously no way at all to justify the licence fee.
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