There’s been another development in the wearying saga of Gary Lineker, the over-salaried presenter of football on the BBC and banal takes on Twitter/ X. An email leak suggests that a draft BBC statement preparing to announce his departure from Match Of The Day is in the works, but he has laughed this off on screen and told a reporter to ‘f-off’ in the street.
I strongly suspect that not a single viewer would be lost if he departed from Match Of The Day
The leaked message, seen by the Daily Mail, purports to be from the broadcaster’s director of sport, Alex Kay-Jelski, and features a statement announcing the former England striker’s departure after 25 years presenting the iconic show. The BBC has refused to confirm or deny whether the email was genuine or not
The statement is bland enough to at least sound true, including as it does a comment from BBC director-general Tim Davie, who hails an ‘incredible’ stint and described Lineker as a ‘world class presenter’.’
‘World class’ is a descriptor used by broadcast people who can’t think of anything more interesting to say about someone or something because they don’t in fact much care.
People leak for a reason, or reasons. Leaks occur when people aren’t happy, as we have seen recently at Downing Street. (Maybe Lineker could be posted to be the BBC’s envoy for the regions?) There is also the possibility that the BBC accidentally forwarded a draft to the wrong person, à la Laura Kuenssberg. I once signed three non-disclosure agreements about a very hot BBC secret, and by the time I got the bus home it was on the news thanks to somebody in the office cc-ing the Daily Express.
If Lineker is to depart, it will be one less world-class headache for the BBC. He has never been shy of letting the world know the political thoughts that pass between those famous FA Cup-style ears.
The trouble is not that media celebrities have opinions or that they express them, but that they are all the same. Lineker adopts the utterly predictable high-status opinion on every single issue, and casts moral aspersions on those who disagree.
This is less a sequence of thought-through considerations, more a tic of tribal conformity. This ability to identify the winning side and team up with it, right or wrong, is probably very useful for evolutionary purposes, but it is deadly to the public discourse. And the public at large have a terrible habit of finding it all ludicrous and tedious.
Boxing promoter Frank Warren recently spoke for many – ‘What the f- are you (Lineker) talking about?’ – when he speculated on Lineker’s ridiculous comments in 2023 about the Tory government’s immigration policy. Lineker described Suella Braverman’s plan on the small boat crossings thusly – ‘This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s.’
We might have hoped that Lineker, boss of the company which owns the brilliant and wildly successful Rest is History podcast, might have reached for a different comparison. But no – it is always Berlin in 1933 for these people when they disapprove of something. You find yourself longing for someone to say ‘It’s the defenestration of Prague all over again’ or ‘You know, this is how the Toluid civil war of 1260 to 1264 got started’, just for some variety.
After that tweet, the BBC ‘spoke’ to Lineker, and in a typical Corporation fudge he was removed from our screens very briefly and then reinstated after his colleagues, understandably, closed ranks. Because you can’t half-sack someone, and the BBC’s rank and file are – believe me, I know – stuffed with people whose minds leap to the odious, tasteless Nazi allusion at the drop of a hat.
The question remains: what is there about this very ordinary man worth all the money, and all the bother? He is not immeasurably beguiling, and is well past the age where hearts might reasonably flutter. I’m told that he knows a lot about football, but then so do plenty of other and cheaper people.
I strongly suspect that not a single viewer would be lost if he departed from Match Of The Day. And this must have occurred to the BBC.
If the leaked statement is real, the change in government may be a factor here. Lineker, like many other celebrities, clearly didn’t like the Tories. Now that they are gone, it becomes a lot easier for certain people and institutions – not least the BBC – to deal with any number of other little problems.
Being rid of Lineker under a Labour government saves the BBC’s face. The presence of Tories in office would have made losing him, under any circumstances, look like a win for their enemies. But now they can, finally, afford to lose him.
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