“The BBC is an amazing institution, but it’s also a complex company,” Gary Lineker told me last month, during an exclusive interview for FourFourTwo.
“It’s a challenge at times. I think maybe we let ourselves down a bit in terms of cowering to the critics – you’re never going to make them happy anyway. Politically, it’s a difficult place to work, in some ways.”
On Monday, that last sentence was proven once more. Amid increasing tension about his social media posts, Lineker announced he’d be leaving the corporation a year early.
Gary Lineker was engaging interviewee
My interview with Lineker was for the cover of last month’s magazine, to mark the fact he’d be stepping down as presenter of Match of the Day at the end of the season, after 26 years.
Arranging an interview with a big name can sometimes be complicated, but this time it was refreshingly straightforward – I made a request to his representatives, and they quickly replied to say that they’d asked Gary, and he’d be happy to talk to us.
Lineker had spoken to FFT several times in the past, and had always been friendly and engaging with us – I can certainly vouch for that, on the occasions when I’d spoken to him myself.
This time was no different. There were no demands to see the questions in advance, as can sometimes happen in this industry. He was happy to sit down and talk candidly about his career and his life – we chatted for the magazine for the best part of an hour, in a private room above a cinema near his home in Barnes, west London.
Just like you see on the television, I again found him a thoroughly decent man, quick-witted and enjoyable to chat to.
Take politics out of it, and he’s long been a national treasure. In fact take politics out of it, and I put it to him that he might well have a knighthood by now. His list of achievements in football and television compares well to others who’ve previously been knighted.
Just like you see on the television, I again found Lineker a thoroughly decent man, quick-witted and enjoyable to chat to.
In our interview, he insisted that even if it cost him honours in the future though, he wouldn’t stop speaking out about issues that mattered to him. “No, that’s way more important,” he said. “You’ve got certain values. I try to stand up for things I believe are important.”
He was briefly suspended by the BBC in 2023 for a tweet calling the government’s policy on asylum seekers ‘immeasurably cruel’, and some things will always prompt him to speak out.
“Humanitarian issues,” he said. “People say ‘Oh, you’ve got a view on everything’. I haven’t. It’s just looking at how we treat each other. I find hatred tough to understand.”
A now polarising figure
The more he’s spoken out though, the more it’s divided opinion on him, such is the increasingly polarised world that we live in today.
His tweet about asylum seekers had essentially been doing no more than advocating kindness to all human beings. “That was it, but that’s not necessarily seen as a good thing by some,” he says. “It’s bonkers.”
Even reaction to our front cover had the same polarising effect. Many readers said ‘Great, I love Gary’, and were delighted to see him interviewed in our magazine. Positive feedback was greater than for any of our other recent magazines. Others made it clear that they didn’t like him.
Ultimately, it was one specific Instagram post that precipitated his early exit from the BBC.
A few days ago, having previously expressed his horror at events that have been unfolding in Gaza, Lineker shared a post about Zionism that included a drawing of a rat, historically used as an antisemitic insult.
Lineker has made clear that he did not see the drawing and deleted it as soon as he was made aware of it, but it was a serious misjudgement that prompted him to apologise.
After previous tension between Lineker and the BBC over his social media posts, it was one controversy too many.
Lineker’s World Cup dream
It’s put an end to plans for Lineker to step down from Match of the Day at the end of the Premier League season, but still continue to present FA Cup matches next term, before finishing with the BBC at the World Cup.
“I liked the idea of finishing at the World Cup, for my ego or whatever it is,” he told me. “It’s mainly as I just want to say the words ‘England have won the World Cup’ – you’ll never hear from me again if those are my last words!
“I’ve always said that my ambition in broadcasting is not about me, it’s ‘Can I please one day say that England have won a tournament?’ I’ve only got one chance left.”
That chance has now gone, with the BBC at least – he insisted during our interview that he had no intention of appearing regularly on another channel after leaving the Beeb, but that was before this unexpected turn of events. What happens now is harder to say.
If this weekend’s final Match of the Day of 2024/25 is the end of his television career, it’s a sad end for a broadcasting great, who clearly didn’t want to finish in this manner, even if his parting with the BBC was ultimately described as mutual.
Maybe though, England’s hopes of winning the World Cup have just increased. In our interview, I asked Lineker how he’d feel if the Three Lions finally won a tournament immediately after he’d left the BBC.
“That’s what will happen – I said to someone ‘You know what’s going to happen here, don’t you? I am the jinx!’” he smiled.
“As a player, a quarter-final and semi-final. Recently we’ve had two finals in the Euros and the semis of the World Cup – maybe I’m the jinx, maybe I should go this summer!’”
In that jovial moment, he was oblivious to how things would unfold in the weeks ahead. Lineker may have been a jinx, but he’s been a highly entertaining jinx for the best part of three decades on television. It wasn’t meant to end like this.
