So, after 25 years Gary Lineker is leaving the BBC.
I say good riddance to this (amateur) political agitator who in recent years has brought nothing but trouble and controversy to the Corporation’s door.
He’s relished every opportunity to stick two fingers up at his bosses, particularly when they begged him to stop posting his political opinions on social media– especially the ones that claimed Tory Home Office policy was similar to Nazi Germany’s.
His response to his bosses begging him to stop was to ignore them and keep posting controversial tweets that upset and offended millions of BBC licence payers who didn’t want his (facile) political opinions foisted upon them.
More importantly, many of those posts actually contravened the conditions of the BBC’s charter (due for renewal in 2027) namely impartiality.
It was clear that Lineker, as an employee of the BBC, sure as hell wasn’t impartial. His stance angered other BBC employees who had had no choice but to stick to the impartially rules while Lineker just laughed and ignored them.
We should also read the talk of his “resignation” with a pinch of salt. Well-placed sources say Lineker desperately wanted to stay (he needs the BBC platform to get other work and promote his other businesses) and that he even offered to take a pay cut.
But the Corporation chose not to offer him a new contract. Why the hell would they?
The man repeatedly and very publicly ignored their pleas to stop embarrassing the Corporation with his misguided political opinions and because he DID ignore them he made his bosses look weak, ineffectual and unable to control him.
So, for once the BBC has done what huge swathes of licence payers wanted – got rid of this man who so gleefully courted controversy.
It also realised that viewers were sick to their back teeth of being lectured by this self-appointed, political “commentator” whose half-baked opinions spat on everything the BBC stands for.
And those opinions would have become ever more controversial with the election of Trump and this new Labour government.
He would have been out of control so presumably the Corporation wanted to limit the damage he might cause.
I never understood why Lineker, who is no big political brain, would choose to put at risk one of the best jobs in the business.
Why did he need to keep being provocative? He earned £1. 3million a year at the BBC and millions more from his podcast empire.
On top of all that he was able to go to all the world’s top sporting events. Why endanger all that to make a few ill informed comments that he knew would court sensational headlines?
Did he think it gave him credibility – made him look like he was more than just a football pundit? If he did, he was dead wrong.
Or was it because he needed to hear the roar of the country – whether it be for or against him – to keep him feeling relevant?
Who knows. But whatever it is – it’s cost him dearly.
The thing is when people earn the kind of money he does and have the kind of profile he has – they start to feel like they’re invincible.
Lineker had more than two decades on an obscenely high salary and behaved in ways that would have had most other employees sacked – yet he wasn’t.
Maybe he believed he was so all-powerful that he didn’t have to be accountable to his bosses, to the licence payers or to the Corporation. Maybe he believed himself to be irreplaceable. Well now he knows different.
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And guess what – there’s already a full blown woke row about his replacement.
Bosses want a job share between footie commentators Mark Chapman and Kelly Somers, with the pair presenting on alternate weeks. Chapman has already refused to share. He says he wants Lineker’s role as his own.
But the fact is neither will go down well with fans as neither have the insight of ever having played football and – rightly or wrongly – many MOTD viewers won’t want a woman presenting the show.
What Lineker and the pundits on MOTD DID have in common was personal experience of having played the game.
But if Lineker is watching the unfolding row he must be wondering what the past 25 years have all been about. Because within 24 hours of the announcement that he was going there’s already a scrap about who’ll replace him.
Lineker is a very rich man so losing this job won’t impact on his life financially. But it will impact on his profile, his ego, his confidence and his selling power.
He might not know it yet but he WILL miss the BBC and the vast platform it gave him.
Because the thing about us viewers is that we’re a fickle lot. It’s a case of “out of sight out of mind.” And if someone isn’t up there on our screens – we just stop thinking about them and move on.
And THAT’S what will hit Lineker the hardest – the speed at which his “legend” status will diminish.
After he leaves the Beeb no-one will be thinking about or talking about him. So even if he does post outrageous tweets no-one will care because he’s no longer working for the state broadcaster.
And he might just find that irrelevancy is a lot harder to come to terms with than the loss of a job.