Gary Lineker, the BBC and celebrity influencers

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau. Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:43BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. It will be the end of an era. The last match of the day presented by the BBC's erstwhile golden boy, the now somewhat tarnished Gary Lineker. He has helmed the programme Match of the Day on Saturday nights since the turn of the millennium. He's become the BBC's highest paid and highest profile presenter. And in recent years, of course, one of its most controversial. He is a man whose career has fascinated me for a long time. I know him a little bit, having interviewed him for my TV show Amol Rajan interviews. That was pretty recent. We talked about his career on and off the pitch.

1:15We talked about his campaigns, his humanitarian work and his run ins with the BBC over impartiality and his use of social media. Ah, social media. Because when we spoke, Lineker thought he had another year of presenting on the BBC to go before he departed. But one repost on Instagram showing a picture of a rat alongside a video titled Zionism explained in two minutes has unceremoniously brought forward his departure from the BBC to this weekend. Lineker said in an interview also posted on Instagram that he did not see the emoji or emoticon of a rat. That rat is an anti-Semitic trope. Lineker says he didn't see it and he is appalled by anti-Semitism and racism in all its forms.

2:00So how did a man who said to me that he's just a footballer who turned into a TV presenter become a campaigner whilst also being the BBC's highest paid presenter? And just what is the nature of influence when it comes to modern folk like Gary Lineker? I'm going to ask the former Conservative Culture Minister, Lord Vasey, and former editor of The Sun, David Yelland. Nick's not here, but this is still going to be fun. Let's do it.

2:35Hello, it's Amol in the Today Podcast studio. Nick is sadly away again. He's watching some team that he supports from a part of the country that he hails from. In fact, I should say Man United are playing in the Europa League final. That's why Nick's not here. He's essentially bunking. I mean, you know, his work ethic has often been something we've talked about. And just to help us out with this recording, he sent us some pictures of him with his sons having what I can only describe as a very good time. Anyway, I'm going to be flying solo today, but we've got a fascinating topic and very much the topic of the week in media land, at least.

3:06We're going to indulge in a little bit of self-promotion because when I spoke to Gary Lineker a few weeks ago, we discussed his run-ins with BBC management over his use of social media and leaving Match of the Day. But remember, when I spoke to him barely a few weeks ago, he was still due to return to the BBC next year for the FA Cup and World Cup. Here it is. I've done it for a long time. it's been it's been brilliant it's been great you don't need to leave the show's doing well it's rating well you're up for it you enjoy it you're good at it well perhaps they want me to leave is that a sense you've got?

3:43there was a sense of that yeah how did Lineker become such a broadcasting phenomenon? certainly there were doubts whether he'd make it at the start of his career just listen to this promotional interview that he did with Zoe Ball on the Radio 1, not Radio 2, but Radio 1 breakfast show shortly after taking over from Des Lynham as the presenter of Football Focus in 1998. Do you know about other sports as well? What other sports are you good on? Curling? I'm not hot on curling. Well, you'd be cold on curling, wouldn't you? I'm keen on it. I like my cricket. I love golf. And I used to play... Oh, I'm getting all hot.

4:21I used to play a lot of snooker, but I'd not played for a long time. I used to think you were the man for me. I've just won my completely cricket, golf and snooker. Really? Oh, dear. No, man. Bring back Dez. He doesn't sound like a broadcasting icon there, though, of course, he was something of a footballing icon when he did that interview with Zoe Ball in 1998. Fast forward 25 years to 2023, and most of his colleagues in BBC Sport boycotted their broadcasting duties after Lineker was suspended from presenting Match of the Day after he compared language used by the Conservative government to describe its migration policy to that used in 1930s Germany.

4:59The BBC backed down, and this is how Lineker and pundit Alan Shearer opened FA Cup coverage a week later when he, Gary Lineker, returned to the airwaves. And Alan, it's great to be here. Yeah, it's good. I just need to clear up and wanted to say how upset we were that all the audiences who missed out on last weekend, it was a really difficult situation for everyone concerned. and through no fault of their own, some really great people in TV and in radio were put in an impossible situation and that wasn't fair. So it's good to get back to some sort of normality and be talking about football again.

5:36Absolutely. Echo those sentiments. That was Alan Shearer speaking to Gary Lineker. In between, he had presented Match of the Day, near naked, after Leicester won the Premier League in 2016. He'd helmed the BBC's coverage of the London Olympics in 2012. Most people said he did that really rather well. And in his spare time, he formed one of the UK's most successful podcast production companies, Goalhanger, home of the Rest Of series. So the rest is politics, the rest is entertainment and so forth. Before we get to our esteemed guests, it simply wouldn't be right, would it, to fail to get the thoughts of perhaps the only BBC man more obsessed with football than Gary Lineker.

6:12You've definitely heard of him. It's Nick. Hola From the streets of Bilbao Where you're more likely to hear English spoken today Than you are Spanish Because the streets here are filled With United and Spurs fans For tonight's final Swapping stories of the extraordinary journeys Of how they got here Great excitement here And of course they all know who Gary Lineker is And what makes Gary different though Is he's known by millions of people Beyond the football or for whom the national game is just something they watch when England play or for an FA Cup final. He's got 8 million followers. Last time I looked at his Twitter account.

6:56And he's a bit different, isn't he? Because in a sport that is often associated with obscene sums of money, personal excess and selfishness, he represents a different sort of values. But it seems to me, and I've told him this, by the way, that Gary, in a sense, wants to have it both ways. He wants to say, look, I'm just a guy who kicks a ball or talks about kicking a ball on the telly. On the other hand, he wants to say, I'm a guy with eight million followers who can use my platform, indeed has a duty to use my platform, to tell people what I think about the world, what I think about Israel and Gaza, what I think about refugees, He's what I think about serving politicians.

7:42And that, in the end, was never going to be sustainable. One or the other. Not both. He was told that. I think he knew it. And I think, deep down, he chose. Because he cares and he thinks he's got a duty to speak out. But his bosses at the BBC, they care too about something called impartiality. And we couldn't have. one rule for him and a different rule for everybody else you know the hubbub in the background which is Nick enjoying with his sons the finest beer Bilbao has to offer whilst giving us thoughts on Gary Lineker and impartiality I think speaks to the work ethic of the great Nick Robinson

8:29well we're joined now by Ed Vasey Lord Vasey and David Lord Vasey who I first met on The Right Stuff on Channel 5 20 odd years ago Anyway, and David Yelland, who now presents the BBC Hit Podcast, and we call it Hit Podcast because it is a hit. Huge numbers are listening to it. It's called When It Hits the Fan, and there's a pun in there, and it examines each week's biggest PR disasters and some general kind of background noise. You've got the BBC to take you on. Yeah, he's made it now. After everything you did to them as the editor of The Sun, you finagled your podcast into the BBC roster. I have actually got an editorial I wrote for The Sun which said why the BBC must be closed down.

9:06framed in my downstairs Lou. Oh, it's funny because Paul Marshall, the boss of GB News, seems to have given a very similar speech just this week. I saw the light. You saw the light. Right, let's talk about Gary Lineker and impartiality and more about what I want to try to get this conversation to, if I may, gents, the nature of modern influence. Really what it is that makes someone like him so influential these days and where the BBC fits into that. Before we do all of that, we've got to just get your brief thought on his departure. Is it right, Ed, you know, someone, Ed, who might have once been the boss of Ofcom, might have once chaired the BBC.

9:40Is it right, do you think, that he's parted ways more quickly than had been planned? I think it probably is. I think it's happened in a relatively low-key way because he'd effectively already announced he was leaving. He was interviewed by a very, very big name, Amal Rajan, and basically made it clear that he was going to stop commentating on football. So I think if he was in the middle, you know, this has been three years ago and, you know, Gary Lineker was carrying on doing much today. It would have been a much, much bigger row. There would have been more of a debate about it. But I think, you know, I totally accept what he says.

10:13He's obviously not anti-Semitic. I'm sure he didn't see the rant. But, you know, it's pretty unpleasant to retweet something like that. And you've got to be, you really do have to be careful. I mean, we'll talk about his influence. If you've got eight million followers, what you retweet is your tweet. It does matter. So I think he's probably made the right decision. He simply advanced his retirement, and so it's much less of a big deal. I should say, he did it. Actually, he's very prolific on Twitter, but he does less of that, as do many other people now, partly because of Elon Musk. As he explained to me, partly because he just thinks Twitter's gone very, very sour.

10:45The post that he shared was on Instagram, where he's also absolutely huge. David, his argument was always that he's an ex-footballer. Ex-footballers should be allowed to have opinions. He doesn't work for BBC News and Current Affairs. Therefore, the rules, even when they were modified and updated, applied to people in BBC News and Current Affairs, like I am, and he, as a freelance sport presenter, should be allowed to say what he thinks about Gaza? I think there's two ways of looking at this. One is you look at the rules, and the other is you look at the picture of influence, and also is Gary Lineker's reputation better now than it would have been if he'd stayed out of politics altogether?

11:23But I'm sure we're going to talk about that, but I think that's a very interesting question, an interesting answer, I think. In terms of the mechanics of how he handled the departure, I agree with Ed, absolutely. He made the mistake. He realised the mistake. He apologised before the BBC asked him to. He took it down very quickly. He should have. It could happen to any of us, but it was a mistake. To answer your question about, you know, he isn't. He's no longer a footballer. And I thought in your interview with him in April, you know, there are a lot of people in the news division here, as you know, feel very angry about the fact that, you know, BBC impartiality is such a valuable thing and he sort of allowed people at dinner parties and wherever to be, you know, you're just a bunch of lefties, all the stuff that the BBC has to fight all the time.

12:07But there are bigger issues at play here as well, I think. But he, it's so interesting you say, he would say the fact that he was not allowed to have his opinions on Gaza is accepting the argument of the enemies of the BBC, including in the press, who think that his views on Gaza somehow compromise the impartiality of the BBC. And he would say, what are you talking about? If you want to know what the BBC thinks about Gaza, or its coverage of Gaza, listen to Jeremy Bowen on the Today programme. I'm a footballer. I'm a literally presenter of Match of the Day, and I have views on humanitarian affairs.

12:40Just on that central point, which is, did his having opinions compromise the impartiality of the BBC? Obviously, his salary came from the licence fee. Is Gary Lineker right, or is critics right? Personally, I think Gary Lineker's right. I don't think he compromised the BBC. I think people are intelligent enough to see that his views don't represent those of the BBC. But they did have to change. Tim Davies, the director of the journal, had to change the rules to accommodate. There was a big review. People should know there was a big review after his tweet in response to another user's response to Sweller-Braverman doing a video.

13:13Yeah, absolutely. He made a comparison with 1930s Germany. There was a big review and the review kind of found in his favour where it did make his demarcation between news and current affairs. Ed, on that central point, did Gary Lineker, the best paid presenter of the BBC, did his having views on what he would call humanitarian affairs, views which tended towards the centre-left positions, compromise the BBC's impartiality? De jure, no. De facto, yes. So technically it didn't. And technically I can accept an argument that Gary Lineker, you know, we live in a free society and he's not a newsreader or a news journalist is entitled to his opinions.

13:46So let me just say the following things. First of all, I totally accept we're all hypocrites about Gary Lineker. If Gary Lineker had spent the last 10 years talking about how marvellous the Tories were, you might find me on a podcast saying, you know, Gary's free to voice his own opinion. You know, if he thinks Rishi Sunak's the best prime minister we've ever had, that's great. So I totally accept quite a lot of this debate is driven by whether or not you agree with Gary Lineker's views. But I think the real problem I had with Gary Lineker, and I think David hinted at it, was he made his colleague's life really difficult.

14:21So you can, as I say, just argue away and say, look, I'm not a newsreader, I'm not a news journalist, I'm just a sports guy, and when I'm off duty and social media gives me this power now, my equipment wouldn't have had it 20 years ago, I can give my views on anything. I can give my views on what somebody was wearing at a film premiere, and I can give my views on a huge issue like Gaza or a big domestically contentious issue like immigration. but the minute you do that you make your life very difficult for the BBC and your colleagues in news and they are your colleagues so I think yes there is a very strong argument say that Gary Lineker not being in news is free to voice his opinion but in reality he it was really difficult you know David said earlier about you know the BBC impartiality guidelines the BBC has these very strict impartiality guidelines because it's funded by the license fee payer and I'm just wondering And it's hard to think of anyone with the reach of Gary Lineker on commercial television, say.

15:23But maybe if you took a presenter on Good Morning Britain who decided to be really vociferous on a highly controversial issue. Or a presenter on one of the kind of morning shows on ITV. Would we be having the same level of debate about their using their platform to push their point of view? Or is it inextricably linked to the fact that the BBC has this particular position and this particular reach in our national life? It's worth saying, some people won't know this, but ITV, Channel 4, others, Channel 5, GB News are regulated by the same broadcast regulator, according to the same regulations backed by the same Royal Charter.

16:08Of course, the difference is their funding model. David, what would you say to Ed? Well, we have had examples of that in the past. Jon Snow, for example, Channel 4 News. and I mentioned Piers Morgan. I mean, Piers Morgan will say things. He often says one thing one day, one thing the next. But, you know... John Snow on Channel 4 News is a good example. So it is a... But I think Gary asks... Gary Lineker, I don't know Gary Lineker very well, but he asks very difficult questions. He asks... Yeah, like when you interviewed him, he talked about the BBC's handling of these issues and he basically said, you know, in common language, they cave in too easily.

16:41They, you know... and they appeased the people who were trying to attack them, he said. And he has a point there. And he said, why didn't they just let it pass? Now, it's easy to say that, and these things are very complicated, and the BBC is licensed payer funded, and it has to respond. But having edited The Sun in the past, I can tell you that those newspapers are out to get the BBC. There's no question about it. So if you allow them to, and that's the problem, If you are on the left, as Gary Lineker is, you will have them outside your house chasing you to the station, literally. Although, of course, he can run faster.

17:21So it's at least a question that's worth asking. And it's one of the many questions he asks. But when he asks that question, he makes a lot of people very uncomfortable. But just a couple of things to what you said. First of all, just on the question of whether or not he's on the left, there's a really interesting thing, which is I think most people would say he's a centre-left guy. He casts himself as a floating voter who's outspoken on humanitarian issues. Yes, he does. And they might be more often associated with the left, Gaza, refugees, climate change. But he sort of is a bit resistant to that.

17:49He made two other points just because he raised it. He made two other points in his interview with me, which taken out of context, made a lot of bots and trolls on Instagram. Very, very happy for a while. But he made two other points. It's quite unpleasant dealing with it. That's all right. I'm a grown up. And if you watch the whole interview, you can see that I do deal with it in the interview. He said that on Russia, Ukraine, the BBC is not impartial. And he said that what he was taking a view on with Gaza was the mass murder of thousands of children. Now, there's a very important set of distinctions here.

18:15First of all, the BBC's impartiality, they would say, is not about whether or not you should have opinions about the slaughter of children or the mass murder of children. It's about a conflict. And it seems to me that most people at the BBC or BBC News would understand instinctively why you need to be impartial about a conflict, which doesn't just start with October 7th. It goes back with lots of history. But also the BBC and BBC News would say that it is impartial about Russia-Ukraine. It is just the fact that Russia invaded 2014 and then re-invaded Ukraine. So there's a few sort of important distinctions.

18:47On the nature of influence, I do want to ask you, because you spent a lot of time covering footballers when you were editor of The Sun back in the day, David. What is it about Gary Lineker that has made him so influential? And is the fact that he was the boy from Leicester, the England captain who seemed a bit shy, did that give almost an extra power and weight to his opinions when he suddenly seemed to have them in the 2010s? The reason he's a great influencer is the same reason he was a great footballer. Talent. He's brilliant. He's a great communicator. I remember watching his Twitter feed back when we called it, when it was Twitter, way before he became controversial.

19:23And I remember trying to find out, is he writing those posts himself? Because he has an ability with words. And that is what drives it. And that's what partly built his audience. Plus the fact he's interesting. I mean, not everyone is interesting. It's quite a difficult thing to be interesting and relevant. He's a talented guy. He doesn't happen accidentally. And I wonder sometimes when people have a talent to communicate, they then look for things to communicate about. And what came first? Was it the ability to communicate and then the controversy? Because he wasn't controversial when he was.

19:57By the way, I love controversial people. I think we don't have enough of them. I mean, in business, the industry I'm in at the moment, the public relations, we advise people all the time not to get involved in Brexit, Trump tariffs. Don't go there. Certainly Gaza, don't go there. And the consequence is no one says anything about anything. And I think, when I look at Gary Lineker, I think I don't really want to condemn him too much because I think we need more Gary Linekers. Yes, he's a bit of a troublemaker, but we need them. We need people like him to say stuff. Yeah, but nobody's disputing that Gary Lineker is interesting or that he's entitled to his opinion.

20:35As I say, the big debate here is whether he can have those opinions and that platform on the basis of working with the BBC. And I accept that, you know, celebrities are influential. And again, my second genuflection to being hypocritical is obviously politicians bend over backwards to get celebrity endorsements. Nothing could have made me happier when I was the shadow culture minister than when Tracey Emin said she was going to vote Tory. And we all know that celebrities have influence. If you run a big charity, you want to bring attention to it. You pray that some celebrity will endorse you. But, you know, in some ways, you can't have it both ways.

21:18You can't on the one hand say, well, everyone knows Gary's just a sports presenter. So if he's going to opine on Gaza, why does it matter? because, you know, people are intelligent enough to know there's Gary Lineker on Match of the Day and there's Gary Lineker on social media talking about Gaza. And then at the same time say, this is a man with enormous influence. Having said that, my conclusion is I agree with the former point. I don't think Gary Lineker would influence a lot of votes. And in fact, I don't think anyone, any celebrity endorsement of a politician moves votes. I think it's a complete red herring to think that if a celebrity backs you.

21:54And I think the key point, the other key point, Sorry, I'm on a roll here. It depends what you're opining on. Laura Koonsberg interviewed Elton John on her show on Sunday. About AI and copyrights. About the creative industry. Which he really knows about. About songwriters having their content ripped off. So, of course, you're going to listen to Elton John because you're actually, you know, to David's point about business people, you're actually listening to Elton John the business person, not Elton John the pop star. So this is what's so interesting about modern influence, right? Which is you can understand why if Kim Kardashian or one of the Kardashians recommends a certain makeup, it moves markets, right?

22:25You totally get that. Similarly, you can understand how if Elton John's talking about, he goes to Ukraine or Russia and says, get serious about AIDS. And he was a great campaigner on AIDS in the 1980s. He's lost friends to AIDS. He sort of really cares about it. But you wouldn't necessarily, and I say this with all due respect to the great man, you wouldn't necessarily listen to Elton John on the question of tapered tax relief on pensions reform. And so there is a question of why does anyone care what celebrities have to say about areas which they're not experts in? And yet isn't the real world, Ed, that they do have followers and that those followers love them and that therefore what they say does matter and that's the world that we're in.

23:03Gary Liddick's influence is owed to the fact that so many people love him. They might love him because he kicked a ball very well, but if he kicked a ball very well... That's a really important point you made, and you've clarified my thinking, because what I think I'm actually saying is celebrities can increase the salience of an issue. Elton John and AIDS, if he hadn't got involved in the AIDS debate. By saying this, you mean raise it up the agenda? Raise it up the agenda, get people to pay attention to it. We didn't need Gary Lineker to raise the salience of Gaza or immigration. And so people have pretty firm opinions and are pretty engaged in those.

23:36I'm not sure about that. I think, why is it that the Daily Mail are so angry about Gary Lineker? Why? And my old paper, The Sun. Why is it? Why do they? I tell you that because he cuts through to their readers. So, you know, he said that it was interesting when you interviewed him. He said, I might come back 20 years time if I'm alive and talk about this again. If you interview him in 20 years time, might the question not be, and I don't say this in any way politically, but might the question not be, why wasn't everybody else, anyone that had a public microphone in front of them, saying something about Gaza?

24:13Yeah, he would say, Lideka would say he's duty bound to raise it. Linnick would say, I've got a platform, I've got followers, people listen to me. And the press aren't doing it. Well, they're beginning to, but he does things that they should do. I do not know Alan Shearer's views on Gaza. That does not make Gaza less salient, nor do I sit there wanting to have my opinion driven by what Alan Shearer thinks. And nor is Alan Shearer thinking, I have a duty to let my public know what I think about Gaza. But also, isn't it an unhealthy, is it not an unhealthy culture where you can improve the salience of an issue because a celebrity got on board with it?