For a man renowned for his equanimity, and a playing career untarnished by so much as a yellow card, Gary Lineker has been attracting some censure of late. Over a frenzied week in March, during which a single tweet managed to throw petrol on searing tensions within the government and the BBC, the model professional was recast as a political firebrand. Here, talking to Alastair Campbell, he reflects on his employer’s own goal
First, I should declare a few interests. I went to the same school as Gary Lineker, though he was a few years below me, and while I remember him because he was already making local headlines as a footballer and cricketer, he has no memory of me. Our next tie-up was via the Blood Cancer UK charity, for which I was once chairman of fundraising and he was a prominent supporter, his son George having survived leukaemia.
In the political arena, we worked together on the People’s Vote campaign for a second Brexit referendum. When Burnley were in the Premier League, I regularly offered him my views of the Match Of The Day running order, a habit I shall resume now we’re back in the big league. And finally, as the BBC and others felt compelled to point out when I went out to bat for Lineker in support of his battle with the BBC and the Tories that followed him airing his views on Suella Braverman’s ‘stop the boats’ propaganda, his Goalhanger company produces my podcast. Defensive throat clearing over. The truth is Lineker, now 62, needs no introduction. One of the country’s most famous footballers, who went on to become one of the country’s most famous broadcasters, he’s been presenting MOTD since 1999 and has for some time been the BBC’s highestpaid presenter. There are few people with profiles such that a single exchange on Twitter could become a front-page, bulletin-leading controversy.
But Lineker has been making news all his life – and staying calm about it. For Talking Heads, meeting at his home in Barnes, which just a few weeks earlier had been besieged by media chronicling his every move, we start with that calm, which has served him so well in both of his careers.
AC: In this series, I tend to ask sportspeople the same first question: how much of your success is down to physical attributes and how much of it is mental?
GL: Well, you can’t be a top athlete without the right physical attributes, but your mentality will always be a big factor, too. I’ve been lucky on that front. I have ups and downs like anyone, but I’m generally very calm, don’t have much of a temper and I’m pretty good at dealing with setbacks. AC: You’ve never had what I would define as ment
