Gary Lineker LIVE! “It’s Hard Not to Get Involved”

13:37Gary Lineker:I mean, I remember the first time he came down, I think I was about, I was about 17. I was playing the reserves and he came in on a midweek night and he just signed and he, it was half time and he came in the dressing room and as he walked in he was huge like six foot four he only just squeezed through the door and he had this incredibly strong scottish accent that i couldn't really understand what he said but yeah it was you english thing you little shit you lazy fucking and i looked at him he was looking at me and i went oh my god oh my god and he came over and he picked me up. He got me against the wall.

14:20Gary Lineker:Against the wall like this, old school. Can't do that now. And he was going, you lazy wee fucking English shape. And I was going, I thought, my career's over. So I wouldn't have minded, but we were 2-0 up and I'd scored both.

14:38Gary Lineker:True. So in the second half, I was terrible. And at the end of the game, he came in, he went, then he got my office nine o 'clock in the morning I went oh god he's going to tell me I'm out I'm gone so I turned up about half eight sat outside like naughty boy outside the headmaster's office and I waited and I waited and nine o 'clock came and he went laddie in you come sit down so I sit down like this and he goes sorry about the accent is there any Scots sorry it's good it's good it's good so he went I just want to say one thing to you you were magnificent last night and I went I beg your pardon he went I just want to make sure you keep your feet on the ground and he gave me this whole lesson about he said I thought I had a chance and that if you live properly and don't fall into the traps that lots of players will fall into and I was so terrified of him that I oddly went out ever

15:43James O'Brien:Yeah. When did you start framing actual ambitions? Because as opposed to just wanting to survive, to play another day, when did you start dreaming of winning an England cap? You were in the second division when you broke through into the first team with Leicester, were you?

16:00Gary Lineker:I played one or two games in the first division and then one or two games. And we were up and down, Yo-Yo Club, Leicester. Well, still are now, but in a bigger way. A little bit further up. And further down. so yeah I don't think there was ever a given moment was there not but I started scoring regularly in the old second division I think I was second highest scorer then the next season I was top scorer in the second division and then I started to I think there's a bit of belief coming then that I could actually knew what I was doing a little bit and I could finish and then we went into the first division we got promoted we lost our first seven games and we stayed up and I finished top scoring won my first golden boot top flight golden boot so then but even then you know even this is madness because then I go to Everton I score 40 goals and I go to the World Cup and I finish the top scoring in the World Cup I'm thinking this is like mental no genuinely mental what's happening how is this happening to me and then we played the next few months later we played at the Bernabeu against Spain for England and I was at Barcelona at the time and I hopped over on the plane and I scored four goals and we beat them 4-2 and I remember running back to the halfway line and Brian Robson is next to me and I went and it was a weird thing to say I just said Robbo I went why am I so fucking lucky and he went fuck off

17:38Gary Lineker:It was genuine.

17:40James O'Brien:I can see both your points. Yeah.

18:04Gary Lineker:the scenes insight and blockbuster interviews plus answers to the questions you've always wanted to ask like do everyone drivers pass their driving test first time spoiler they don't when the race

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18:32James O'Brien:Just tell us about the call coming through for your first cap.

18:36Gary Lineker:Amazing. That was actually I was a late call up because it was England-Wales and we were playing in Wrexham. It was, I think it must have been a Monday afternoon and the phone went, my mum answered it and And I was home after training and she said, it's Gordon Milne, who was the manager that took over after Jot Wallace, who's a lovely, lovely guy and also hugely influential. And she covered the phone. She said, Gordon Milne. I thought, what have I done? You know, immediately I'm thinking, oh, God, what have I done? And I walked over and he went, Gary, I said, yeah. He said, come to the club. He said, first of all, pick up a toothbrush.

19:21Gary Lineker:rush, come to the club, collect your boots and drive yourself up to Wrexham. Bobby Robson's been on the phone, you're in the England squad. And I was a mixture of ecstatic and terrified. Terrified at the fact that, how the fuck do I find Wrexham? I mean, it's not like nowadays, no ways back then. So I got in the car and also the other horrendous thing was in those days, players that you start to get a bit of a name, you get a sponsored car, but have your name written all over it. And I had a deal with Fiat. And I had a Fiat Uno. A red one. With my name, Gary Linker drives Fiat Uno. On the side, all over the side.

20:13Gary Lineker:I had to drive into the car park at Wrexham in this car. Oh, it wasn't the worst thing that happened to me in that car.

20:22James O'Brien:It's a reminder, of course, of how much the money has changed in the game. Because you'd have taken that car because you wanted it and you needed it. Yeah, I was on when I left Leicester.

20:33Gary Lineker:So that would have been the same last contract with 400 quid a week.

20:37James O'Brien:It's incredible, really, when you think about it.

20:39Gary Lineker:Yeah.

20:40James O'Brien:Isn't it? The difference, yeah. My godfather was a football reporter on the News of the World. and he would have household name footballers who were on the slide who would be ringing him up hoping for a couple of hundred quid to give him some paragraphs for Sunday's paper. And now, you know, people, well, no one needs lessons from me on how much money football players earn. The emotions of it, I know you've said in the past that you score a goal for England. In one sense, your life has peaked. That's not a feeling you're ever going to be able to emulate or relive in any other contest. And I know...

21:16James O'Brien:Well, 48 times. Yeah.

21:27James O'Brien:So you score a goal for England 48 times. And those are obviously moments that you're never going to be able to... I mean, as you wheel away from the goal in that minute, Douglas Adams, the writer, has a line about euphoria, really, when you're in the zone as a writer, He says you throw yourself at the floor and you miss. You kind of soar off into this magical universe. There's nothing like that.

21:50Gary Lineker:There really isn't. And it's the one thing you can't replace. But also, you don't necessarily miss it because the reason it was so magical was that you never knew that it would happen again until it happened. And it's hard to do. people say what's it feel like scoring a goal for England right so what does it feel like when you're watching England play in a World Cup and someone scores a goal well it's like that times 20 it's like an explosion of like joy and relief and it's just incredible it's impossible to describe I had a conversation with Michael Owen not long ago and he's in the horse racing game And I said, does it compare with one of your horses when they win a big race?

22:41Gary Lineker:He went, no. No, nothing does. But again, I'll say, is it something that I miss? But not really, because it's not going to happen. Some players do.

22:56James O'Brien:No, I was going to try and reassure you, but that would be ridiculous, wouldn't it? When did you start thinking about what you would do next? Because a lot of footballers, of course, don't. and that is where a lot of the bad stories have their genesis.

23:09Gary Lineker:I was encouraged. I had a very good agent, John Holmes, who's been with me a long time and he was very keen for me to think about what I wanted to do after I finished playing. I talked to you about the fact that I used to write match reports in journalism. I was very interested in the media even when I was mid-20s to late-20s. That's when I started. I used to sit with the journalists when they wrote their match reports. you certainly wouldn't do that with a lot of journalists now um and and sit with radio people and i always used to volunteer to do the interviews for for tv and stuff like that because i thought to myself that that's where i wanted to head and punditry was just starting to become a thing but i also thought to myself i used to look at i was a cricket obsessive and at this stage latterly in my career david gow was starting to present yeah cricket um sue barker was doing tennis and i looked at football and I thought, why isn't there a footballer that's been at the top?

24:09Gary Lineker:I mean, there's Bob Wilson, but he's a goalkeeper, so it doesn't really count. But Bob's great. I love Bob to bits and he's an excellent broadcaster. But I thought to myself, if I could crack the difficulties of learning to present, rather than be a pundit, it might give me more longevity. Okay.

24:28James O'Brien:That's quite thoughtful, isn't it? I mean, it's a proper plan.

24:32Gary Lineker:But again, through help and advice from my...

24:35James O'Brien:But that's the first proper plan you've had, really, in the course of this conversation. I'm just planning to get to the end of this conversation. But what I mean is that the football just happened quite organically, whereas this is a mission. I would say I was born to be a footballer.

24:54Gary Lineker:I was born to be in the box. I think I learnt to be on the box.

25:00James O'Brien:Very good. You've used that line before.

25:01Gary Lineker:And this one I've used as well. Soon I'll be in a box.

25:08James O'Brien:So, I mean, did you have to bash doors down or were people quite encouraging when you decided to make them?

25:13Gary Lineker:No, I also get a lot of letters from people saying, how do you make it into media? And I probably give the same advice as anyone else. You know, work really hard, send letters everywhere, try maybe local radio, hospital radio, things like that. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Or score loads of goals for England. Yeah, because that's how I got in, because given an opportunity, I was punditry for a couple of years first, but I used to sit alongside Des Lynam and I was always asking him stuff. Right. Yeah, because I was keen to learn.

25:44James O'Brien:And you can tell, can you, when other players are in the studio, who's going to be all right as a pundit and who isn't pretty quickly?

25:52Gary Lineker:You can tell generally by their attitude, because pretty much all of them really understand the game. but it's not enough just to understand the game you've got to understand how to broadcast and it's not easy talking over a 60 second clip of of four clips of of defensive organization and it's not an easy thing to do so you've got to work just as hard as that as you do at football

26:21James O'Brien:it's not easy to read autocue actually i mean it's harder than it sounds um yeah it takes a

26:28Gary Lineker:a bit of getting used to, that's for sure. So in some ways, it's easier without.

26:32James O'Brien:Yeah. Because you don't... You see your pants, you can't kind of... Well, you just talk.

26:37Gary Lineker:You can just talk. But if... I mean, one thing...

26:39James O'Brien:God knows what that's like, Gary. I've got no idea.

26:41Gary Lineker:Yeah. One thing happened to me once on Match of the Day. I was going away, and we were about seven games in. But, you know, I always... I've gotten a script in front of me. So the Realtor Queue company... It's quite a long link. I can't remember the two teams that were playing. but we got halfway down the link and it stopped and that's happened a lot of times so just as it stops it's fine you just pause you start to look to your script you know you've got your words there because i couldn't remember which bloody game it was because we'd already done six so so i'm starting to look down to read and then i see it moving again so i look up but it's moving backwards

27:21Gary Lineker:and it completely threw me and i just thought when in doubt share it with the audience and i I just said, your autocue's going backwards. It's really weird.

27:30James O'Brien:Yeah. But it is, yeah, it takes a bit of getting used to. So the segue was quite painless, but you don't get a moment, some footballers do, you didn't have a kind of grand denouement, did you? There wasn't a sort of big farewell. You're playing in Japan at the very end of your... I had a quite big farewell in Japan. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm glad to get rid of me.

27:51Gary Lineker:Big in Japan. I used to go back to corners. I know this sounds terrible, but in Japan, I was always left up top, happily so, on the halfway line. Now everyone comes back, every player, I don't get it. So I used to stay on the halfway line, I got to Japan, bring back the big man. I thought, oh, quite liked it, quite liked it.

28:21James O'Brien:so the broadcasting career takes off quite nicely they think it's all over was was quite a big part of that because it showed a levity yeah that was also a deliberate choice from john as well

28:33Gary Lineker:um to show that you could be funny well not necessarily show that i could be funny but to show that it was all a little bit like goody goody two-shoes you know there's no yellow cards and and all this sort of stuff. So it's nicey-nicey, so he thought it might give me an edge.

28:50James O'Brien:Because you would, you know, quite, you have an edge off the square. You're a fun guy. You're not square. So, I mean, duck to water then. So the broadcasting... No, it wasn't a duck to water.

29:05Gary Lineker:I remember the first two years of presenting, I was thrown in at the deep end. and this was you know this was pre-autocue as well and you know so i did football focus right and i used to go in do the show and so many times driving home i used to think i'm never going to be able to no no i used to get like a bit wooden and trying to learn you'd learn to listen you know, like to hit a count while you're speaking, like interview someone and then from that go into a link and you know what it's like, but it's just, it takes some getting used to. I'd never, never ever done it. So there's so many times I just thought, I'm never going to be able to do this.

29:52James O'Brien:And you can learn the art, you can learn the craft then in a way that you can't now, because now if you, if you didn't hit the ground running, the internet would be full of people calling you all sorts of names.

30:02Gary Lineker:Exactly. Having said that, my kind of learning was on BBC. Right. And it wasn't on a little satellite channel somewhere where you could learn with not many people watching. So I remember the second show I ever did was actually presenting was England versus Scotland's highlights of Euro 96, which got 11 million viewers. Yeah. I mean, 11 million viewers. I mean, it was a big deal, that game. And I didn't know there were 11 million people watching at the time, thankfully.

30:38James O'Brien:I suppose, I mean, this will sound a little bit odd, but given what we were saying about the Fiat Uno a minute ago, you needed another career. But footballers today who scale the heights that you scaled could hang up their boots forever and be set up for life and the rest.

30:54Gary Lineker:Absolutely. I mean, I don't mind sharing this. I was one of the top paid players in the world when I was at Barcelona. Earning something like about 320 ,000 quid a year, which was an enormous amount of money at the time. That's a week's wages now for a moderately good Premier League player. So it has changed. But that felt a lot at the time. But even then, it wouldn't have been enough to sustain. There's a lot of life after football. a lot of life

31:27James O'Brien:and there's jeopardy here then you need to make a go at the broadcasting because you know there's not really a plan C when did you allow yourself to start thinking I reckon I could take over from Des Linen on match of the day

31:40Gary Lineker:well it came a lot quicker than I thought it would because well Des I started Football Focus in I think it was about because Steve Ryder left for ITV first and then that created a gap I was so lucky with timing that created a gap at Football Focus where I could learn. And then Des left for ITV. And I remember it was a Tuesday because we used to have Football Focus meetings on a Tuesday. And I was driving into television centre and the security guards on the door, he said, terrible news about Des Liner. I went, what do you mean? And he went, he's gone to ITV. I went, has he?

32:25Gary Lineker:And he said, who do you think they're going to give it to? I went, I'm about to find out. And I went in and the guys that pulled me in, they said, right, you're in. Straight away. So, yeah, I learned a lot from Des, but I'm glad he pissed off.

32:44James O'Brien:And you made it your own. I mean, you really did make it your own. And you seemed very relaxed from the very start, but when were you truly relaxed?

32:52Gary Lineker:I think it took a few I'd already done a couple of years football focus which I told you it took me a while to and then I would say probably another couple of years to get absolutely used to the environment and feel in charge of it so I look back now and I think I don't like it but it wasn't quite bad enough for them to ditch me but I think and I started to progress And in the end, you become relaxed and you become yourself. And then people decide whether they like you or not. Ultimately, it's about likability.

33:26James O'Brien:Yeah, and I guess the more authentic you are, then the less you're going to worry about things because that's who I am and you can take it or leave it. Which isn't true in media dealings. We should probably have a quick word about how attention, unwanted attention from the media, goes hand in hand with the level of success that you enjoyed. And even before you started speaking your mind, more publicly. You had quite a rough time from British newspapers, like almost everybody did. It was hard to believe,

33:59Gary Lineker:but it was way worse back in... Yeah, I know. I mean, for footballers as well. Yes. And anyone famous, I mean, they're basically trying to trap you. Yeah. Trap you into some kind of, you know, love triangle or, you know, honeypots and all this kind of thing. So you constantly, you know... so the i used to get i mean i there used to be rumors about me that i was this kind of floundry you know i used to go mess around with and i never was because i i was happy and and b i was you know terrified of that kind of thing so i never i never messed around and then i used to get we used to get my agent would call me on a when you get the call on a saturday night he's like news of the world have been on apparently you're the father of a child and he'll go I'm sorry I've got to run it by I went nonsense and it was always nonsense but you get a knot in your stomach because if they run that story you know

34:58James O'Brien:it's half way round the world before the truth has got its trousers on that's it and they did run stories like that about people

35:05Gary Lineker:not having their trousers on but it was dreadful that side of it has changed a little bit and it's probably changed because of you know the awfulness of the hacking and phone hacking and and that and i know you know obviously loads of people we're all done we're all done with that so um i remember this was a mad i was sitting at home and news night was coming on and they were doing something on the phone hacking thing i thought i'll watch this and they started and they went boom boom boom boom boom and the big five four or five big banner you know the big banner headlines it was like Prince Harry David Beckham blah blah blah me right so I've gone what the fuck I'm genuinely sitting there and watching oh my god what is this so they go they've got this one of the investigators who's kind of term whistleblower.

36:06Gary Lineker:So he's saying, he's gone through and they've gone through Prince Harry and then it's right, whoever was presenting. So Gary and then he go, yeah, he was clever. So I thought, go on. He went, we followed him for two years, but he obviously knew it because he led us nowhere. I never had a fucking clue that I was followed for two years. They then show, they genuinely, this footage must be somewhere. They've cut to a little, he went, for example, so she was like, how do you do it? So we, and they've got it. He's in a bush, right? Filming me, the other side, I'm playing golf and I'm on the tee and how have I not seen him?

36:52Gary Lineker:How incredible. And he's, and I'm, it wasn't a bad swing, wasn't it? I was just thinking, I bet you were doing that. Of course, I was worried about the swing and it was not too bad for me. It was genuinely, genuinely gobsmacking. That's incredible, isn't it?

37:05James O'Brien:So you can't win. It wasn't that you were squeaky clean, it was that you were very clever. There's a great story about... I can't remember who they were, but they were camped outside a massage parlour, trying to catch a very specific celebrity who never turned up. But I think Sarah Ferguson's dad did, and the poor sod ends up all over the newspaper. No one had previously had a clue that he was... Not her husband? No, no, no, it hasn't. he's never in the news is he? I wonder what ever happened to him no idea so you're on this I mean you become at this it's a weird phrase national treasure and I don't think I've ever met a national treasure who's comfortable with being described as a national treasure but you do it twice you do it as a footballer and then you do it as a broadcaster you achieve the kind of level of success and popularity that most people can only dream of happening once, never mind really happening twice.

38:03James O'Brien:Oh, absolute national treasure, yeah. Quite right. I don't know how you answered that. Show me a T-shirt. Show me a T-shirt. Tattoo. But there must have come a point, whether you were conscious of it or not at the time, where you realised you'd become part of the televisual furniture because they asked you to do the Olympics. You become settled.

38:21Gary Lineker:You become settled, and they ask you to do the big things, which is fabulous. And I, it's funny, I mean, I love playing football. And as I said, there's nothing like scoring a goal. But there's also buzz about television as well. But people say, what's more nerve-wracking, presenting England in a World Cup game or playing for England in a World Cup game? And the truth is, if you mess up on TV, no one cares but yourself. If you mess up for England in a penalty shootout or something, you affect people's mood for a long time so there is a it's much more relaxing presenting a big show because you can fluff your words occasionally or ask the wrong question it doesn't matter

39:13James O'Brien:20 years later people are going to shout it out of their car as they drive past not if it's happened on telly so a bit of a faux pas on the telly

39:25James O'Brien:when did you start flexing your political muscles and was it was it social media i can't remember was that how it started yeah i've always had views of course you have but there was never

39:35Gary Lineker:a platform to use it and then sadly there was

39:41oh dear oh dear what could possibly go wrong um and i have views and i have a you know a bit of

39:48Gary Lineker:sense of humour in some things. And then, and, and it's, I blame my son, George, right? Right. So I'm sitting at home, this is 2012, I think. So I'm sitting at home and George is on Twitter and he's going, I'm going, I said, we're watching the game, right? And he's, I said, you're not watching the game. He said, I'm doing both. Yeah. I said, all right. Okay. What, what is it? He said, it's Twitter. I said, what do you mean he said well you just write a few things and then people like them or not or you get a bit of a debate going i went well sounds ridiculous and he went no he said he said you would love it this is what he said he said in fact i went how does it work how does anyone know you're on there he said i've got he got quite a following george yeah i mean he's up to nearly 100 000 or something but at the time he had about 25 30 000 followers which was quite big he got in early he was into it.

40:44Gary Lineker:And he's got a very dry sense of humor and very self-deprecating manner. So anyway, so he said to me, right, I said, how do you get, he said, well, people, word of mouth, this and that and the other, he went, I'll bet you five pounds, right? If I put you on there now, he said, by the end of the night, you'll have more followers than me. I went, don't be ridiculous.

41:09Gary Lineker:and he just I knew he did it and he posted dad's on dad's on here we go and then it went and then it went someone else and then it went and all of a sudden by the morning it was like 150 200 and it was I had to give him a fiver

41:26James O'Brien:not the only fiver he's ever had what what did you get out of it someone asked me this the other day and it's hard to remember because neither of us are on there anymore. You're not, are you?

41:36Gary Lineker:I've still got it, but it's only to post a podcast. Right, I don't even do that. That's it. I'd never read anything. I don't look at it because it's a cesspit.

41:45James O'Brien:Precisely. Shitter, has it changed? It's hideous. Absolutely hideous. But back in the good old days,

41:51Gary Lineker:what did you get out of it? You could have some chat with people. There wasn't much abuse flying around back then. You could put out your points. You could talk about football going on. It was a great way, I think, of guiding people towards the things that you did match of the day BBC loved it back then certainly enough and it went on for years like that it was a lot of you know you know you'd have a little few spats but fun spats of course you know with whoever and then and then it started to turn a bit but you you know I always put my political views always tried to be a bit careful but it was also in those days not an issue for the bbc because in until about i can't remember the exact year but about 2019 the impartiality rules only applied to those in news and current affairs not to anyone else so it was fine and then suddenly someone goes well you can't do that what do you mean i can't do that anymore the goalposts were like shifted massively over there well what do you mean i can't have an opinion on anything anymore.

42:57Gary Lineker:Why does that? Which I could quite understand. I mean, you can have an opinion as long as your opinion is what they want you to have an opinion.

43:05James O'Brien:Yeah. Or it's not an opinion that's going to upset the Daily Mail because there's plenty of...

43:09Gary Lineker:Well, bizarre. This is my... I mean, I love the BBC. I owe it so much. It's a brilliant organization and there's so much good about it. But I used to say to them, I used to say to them, stop worrying about the Daily Mail. They're going to hate you anyway. They don't want the license fee they want to kill the license fee they want to kill everything about the bbc stop trying to placate them stop it it's just doesn't make any sense giant mouth that they're just throwing

43:34James O'Brien:things into it's never going to be full it's not anyway that's here we are did you know that you because when you were getting your phone calls from the from the from your agent telling you that the news of the world you get the not the only vague equivalence to that that i ever had was on saturday nights when the managing editor at lbc would ring me and i could tell from his voice that he was about to mention something I'd tweeted about Nadine Dorish.

43:58James O'Brien:Poor bloke. It was cruel because she was, I mean, crikey, I know it's very hard to believe. She was Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, and we are a massive media company. So there were things that I shouldn't have been doing on Saturday night. She probably needed your help to learn one or two things. I could have probably given her a little bit of guidance on, for example, who owned fucking Channel 4 for a novel. But I would get those calls. And I kind of knew when I was on Twitter a lot, whether it was about her or not. I kind of knew, not always, sometimes I was completely taken by surprise, but I kind of knew when I was pulling the pin out of a hand grenade and lobbing it into the ether.

44:40James O'Brien:Did you? I tried to avoid doing that.

44:43Gary Lineker:I mean, you are cleverer than me, you're in the news world. and I, you know, but, but sometimes I, I have that thing that I care and that's when it's hard to not get involved. If you see something that's desperately wrong, it's hard not to get involved a little bit. Um, so, you know, I would do that sometimes. I get the odd little message or phone call. We're not particularly happy with this.

45:11James O'Brien:That begins like this.

45:13Gary Lineker:Yeah, that's it. Yeah. And I was going, well, you know, you move the goalposts, not me. There's nothing in my contract, nothing that's stated that you can't use social media to, you know. And I was always trying to be careful. And then obviously I replied to a pretty venomous kind of chuprous tech message with the thing about, you know,

45:41Gary Lineker:comparisons with early 30s German. It was pretty mild. Not dissimilar

45:46James O'Brien:to that used by Germany in the 30s.

45:49Gary Lineker:Yeah, not dissimilar. So fairly accurate, I would say. But it created a bit of a storm and then it was, I mean...

45:58James O'Brien:And then you had this extraordinary silver lining, didn't you? Because I think uniquely they suspended you and everybody else down tools as well that must have been i mean genuinely no messing around that must have been

46:11Gary Lineker:an incredible moment for you that was the most one of the most emotional things i've ever had i mean i had a group chat with alan sheeran in right and we would obviously chat enjoying that and i i said on that group chat i said i've got a feeling they're going to stand me down on saturday night and right he said if they do that i'm not doing the show and it happened to be that right in alan we're going to do the show on saturday night so and it's one thing saying that yeah but to down tools for someone else's cause that doesn't happen no and it was friday afternoon and well it's firstly I had a lunch I had a lunch with a couple of friends of mine one of them being Giles Corrin funnily enough and JD and who was the other one I can't remember but anyway we had a lunch and I got the message that they were going to drop me they made it publicly before they told me right nice touch yeah so we sit in the restaurant I went, look, this is going to happen.

47:26Gary Lineker:And within half an hour, Ian Wright tweeted that he wouldn't be doing the show. And I went, oh, my God. Wow. I went a bit. As I am now, whenever I think about it. I bet, I bet. And then 20 minutes later, Shearer did the same. And I was in the back of a cab by the stage with my mate. I was sobbing. Absolutely sobbing. That's support.

47:51James O'Brien:Because if they hadn't done that, you'd have still been best mates. It was not something you could have expected them.

47:57Gary Lineker:I never, ever expected them to do that. And then obviously everyone else followed and then the commentators downed tools and then it was like, wow. And then from going, you know, they're desperately asking me to apologise and I kept saying, I don't think I've got anything to apologise for. I genuinely don't, so no. And then skip forward 36 hours and they're apologising to me. so but you know i i understand how difficult it is for them and the influences that there are at the top of course bbc but um it was incredibly moving weekend i i can't think of anything like it

48:35James O'Brien:and you know i do this stuff for i've been following this stuff for the best part of 30 years for a job i can't think of anything like it no that moment when it dropped and you saw these two men doing this thing of public solid i love them forever i bet you do i bet you do um There was no way back after the next, after the mistake that you, which was clearly a mistake. The mistake wouldn't have landed as heavily as it did.

49:01Gary Lineker:I never ever felt worried during the first thing. It didn't bother me because I felt I was in the right. I didn't think I was in the wrong. But the emoji I missed, that upset me because it was a mistake because I didn't see it. In fact, it was up there apparently for quite a long time before anyone even noticed it themselves. And then Andy's here tonight. Works with John, my agent now, Andy. And he called me and he said, there's an emoji on there. I went, oh no, really? And, you know, I didn't really know that it was this sort of trope. I mean, why would you think that about fellow human beings ever?

49:48Gary Lineker:But I just, you know, put two and two together. I thought, this is bad. This is really bad.

49:52James O'Brien:Because it's not principled. I apologised immediately.

49:55Gary Lineker:And I apologised again. But it wasn't enough for them. But, well, I could have sat it out. But I thought, actually, you know what? Let's walk away.

50:05James O'Brien:And you did. And it meant that things ended a little earlier than you would have liked. But not in a way that casts any sort of shadow over what you'd achieved prior to that time.

50:13Gary Lineker:No, I don't think there's anyone out. Genuinely, there might be a few people that want it. Always. want it to be that but i think i think also would i be that stupid no not deliberately stupid i mean i can be stupid but not that stupid to to have put that out there deliberately no of course not

50:32James O'Brien:and when did you start having let the dust settle and licked your wounds and and um dealt with the change when did you start thinking about what else you might like to do next well i was already

50:42Gary Lineker:you know, I had podcast empire. It is that, it is. So I was already doing that anyway. And then, you know, and then other offers started to come in reasonably quickly. And so, because again, I think people recognised what it was. It was a genuine error, mistake. And so, yeah, so it didn't really, and the truth is now actually, I mean, in hindsight, and I never, you know, would have wished this or I wouldn't say I'm glad it happened, but as things have transpired, I've had Saturdays off all week, I'm going to do the World Cup for Netflix in New York whilst BBC are doing the World Cup in Salford.

51:29Gary Lineker:Yeah. Bizarrely. Played nice. But so, yeah, things have turned out. What else is in the diary?

51:36James O'Brien:What else?

51:37Gary Lineker:I've got a new series, a reality show actually, which I'm hosting. Oh, thank God for that. Yeah, no. I've always been asked on to reality shows forever and I've always said not until Ant and Dec retire or Claudia gives up. I don't mind that. But it's called The Box and it's a lot of fun. Yeah, it is genuinely something completely different. Your face changed a bit then.

52:06James O'Brien:There's a little bit of an excitement about that. Another project.

52:09Gary Lineker:I know, amazing. A new challenge. Yeah, I'm a bloody pensioner as well.

52:14James O'Brien:When do we get to see that?

52:17Gary Lineker:Probably, I think they're looking at very early September.

52:21James O'Brien:And how do you make decisions? I mean, not just now, but going back over the last 20 years, when these various offers come down in front of you and you obviously work very closely.

52:29Gary Lineker:Well, I always turn them down, really. I mean, I was at the BBC and I was there for... There's only so much you could do.

52:36James O'Brien:But what are you looking for? I mean, what are the things that tickle your fancy?

52:40Gary Lineker:well I like the look of this idea I thought it was really clever I mean basically for those that you wouldn't know yet because it's not out so there's 10 celebrities they've got these big yellow boxes that they plonk around different parts of the country and the celebrities are inside them and they do not know what they're going to do what they're faced with or what kind of game it is until they come out the box and it works and it's a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to people seeing it It's something completely different than I've done before, but it's lighthearted and fun.

53:14James O'Brien:I love it. What an absolute joy. Thank you so much. Ladies and gentlemen, Gary Lineker.

53:18Gary Lineker:Thank you. Thank you.

53:30Gary Lineker:This has been a Global Player original production.