They think it’s all over … well, it is now. We’ve had false alarms about Gary Lineker leaving the BBC before, and several yellow cards have been flashed. But this time – following his reposting of a video about Israel featuring a rat emoji – the ref has finally blown the whistle and pulled out the red. Lineker is to leave the BBC, ‘stepping back’ at long last.
The BBC’s attitude towards what the ‘creative sector’ calls ‘talent’ – in plain language, the attitude of showbiz to its stars – is once again on full display. It begins to look like a pattern; the Beeb lumbers itself with a powerful, popular figure it cannot control – Russell Brand, Huw Edwards – and clings on to them beyond all limit of sense. If they’re lucky, the concerning behaviour is exposed only years, even decades later, as in the cases of Brand, Jimmy Savile or Martin Bashir. But that’s no excuse for Lineker, who has run rings around them, in full public view, for years. They even rewrote their own guidelines to accommodate his foibles.
There is no particular need for Gary Lineker, just as there is no particular need for the BBC
I think this is partly due to the incredible rate of staff turnover at the corporation. One of the many oddities I noticed when working for them was that the freelancers they hired in to make programmes for them churned over far less often than the layer of actually directly employed BBC staff. You’d rarely encounter the same person twice and almost never a third time. So long-standing ‘issues’ never got resolved but were pass-the-parcelled to the next one in line.
Strangely, this constantly shifting workforce would fret about the institution and its reputation – and its ‘compliance’ with often very stupid regulations – as if they were old-time company men. This, despite the fact that their feet barely seemed to touch the ground before they melted away like summer clouds, never to be seen again. Nothing and nobody sticks there, giving the place a Kafkaesque atmosphere, of a self-replicating bureaucratic machine with only incidental human parts. This lack of continuity inevitably makes its output tend towards slush.
To my eyes, these hordes of the great churn were often treated quite badly – not out of malice but sheer bureaucratic negligence. But a select few employees – the aforementioned ‘top talent’ – attained a certain level, and suddenly they became untouchable and unchallengeable. Cars mysteriously glided up to waft them the length of the land. Wine emerged from mysterious compartments. When one of these exalted ones walked through the canteen, a ripple of haze moved with them.
Lineker was at the very apex of this talent hierarchy. What remains to be said of him? Dropping an obviously racist video on Insta was too rich even for the BBC’s blood. Lineker is the ideal mug for Hamas-fluffers – an idiotic wealthy white Westerner with a piety complex, easy pickings for a sinister death cult. The BBC threshold is very high, but he finally, inevitably crossed it.
His parting statement is typically grandiose and hand-washing; ‘I would never consciously repost anything anti-Semitic – it goes against everything I stand for,’ he said.
But hang on. ‘Everything I stand for’? Who is this speaking – Gandhi? Martin Luther King? No. This is a man whose job it is to nod affably and say things like ‘still to come, goals galore at Goodison Park’. The haughtiness makes one want to grab him by the shoulders and shout into his face, ‘Why do you believe you “stand for” anything, you oversalaried, jug-eared, salty snack-touter?’
Such self-importance is typical of the TV class. In my TV career I encountered many people who thought a large part of their job was to civilise the natives, to enlighten them into the correct progressive opinions. Unfortunately for them, the public – unlike sheep – can sense when they’re being herded and have a nasty tendency to turn and bite.
The law of TV used to be that nobody was indispensable. The BBC’s flurry and worry about holding on to Lineker, viewed from the outside, has been very strange. People are obviously not watching a show like Match Of The Day for its presenter, just like precisely nobody was tuning in to see Huw Edwards, in particular, reading the news. It’s as if people were to go into a panic because the frame of a famous painting had fallen off. Just get another frame from Homebase! Plenty of people can read the words ‘Now, more action from Leeds versus Spurs’ off a little screen or say, ‘An impressive second half from Notts there’.
There is no particular need for Gary Lineker, just as there is no longer any particular need for the BBC. Goodbye Gary – and may the sad remains of the poor old BBC follow you swiftly.