What is a weekend?” asked Maggie Smith in one of the more memorable lines from Downton Abbey. Before the Second World War, for many of the populace a weekend entailed church on Sunday. After 1945, the rush of enthusiasm for football on Saturday afternoons, once the five-and-a-half-day working week was ended, became a major feature. Then, as television arrived in the Fifties and Sixties, football took its nervous first steps into the medium, and Match of the Day (MOTD) was born.
The resignations of Justin Welby as Archbishop of Canterbury and of my client Gary Lineker from MOTD vied for top billing in the press and TV. Writing the week after this furore gives me cause to reflect on where the Church and the beautiful game now stand in the public domain. That these two seemingly disparate pieces of news should command equal attention is telling.
Operation shrimp
As Gary’s agent, the negotiation of the deal in which he will move to a role presenting only live football on the BBC after this season has been the focus of much of my recent attention. This was always going to be difficult, given Gary’s desire to bow out gracefully, and the BBC’s new head of sport’s impatience to make changes to the format. But an email leak about Gary’s departure developed into a media frenzy. At this point, it was important that our team maintained silence: no comment, no briefing. “Let’s keep shrimp,” I messaged with clumsy fingers and the help of autocorrect. Followed by: “Apologies – shtum.”
“I like ‘Let’s keep shrimp’, could catch on,” responded Gary with a laugh-out-loud emoji.
Requests for comment poured in from journalists, almost always prefaced with, “I hope you’re well” – to which in my dyspeptic moments I have been known to reply, “Actually, no,” and detail the progress of my treatment for prostate cancer (fortunately the drugs are working). After a while, I took to responding simply “Operation Shrimp”, accompanied by a shrimp emoji and – after further research – the flag of Benin; it seems that Operation Shrimp was the name of an abortive 1977 coup in the African country.
Trial by media
The BBC promised an inquiry into the leak, but I suspect that although my great uncle Sherlock would have been concluding “elementary, my dear Watson” fairly quickly, we may never get answers. And so, after 25 years, Gary’s Saturdays travelling to and from Manchester will revert to a more normal pattern. He will still headline the BBC’s FA Cup and World Cup coverage in 2026, and the Goalhanger Podcasts empire continues to grow apace.
Several world-class athletes in various sports have made the transition into being world-class presenters (Richie Benaud and Jack Kramer spring to mind), as opposed to pundits, of which there are many, and commentators – a few, mostly in cricket. After the 1986 World Cup, when Gary began to consider life after football, we developed a plan with the aid of Niall Sloane and Brian Barwick, then senior BBC football producers, to train him up to present on TV. In the early days when he played for Barcelona, he was linked up by telephone from Spain to discuss Saturday’s English results on local radio. He wasthrust into the hot seat in 1997, taking over as host of Grandstand when the great Des Lynam was evacuated from the Aintree Grand National after a bomb scare.
When Lynam was seduced by big money from ITV, Gary was the natural choice to take over as presenter of MOTD. Under him, the show has evolved from covering just a few games into providing analysis of every major Premier League game, and its international reach has expanded further. When Gary presented the live feed for a World Cup draw in 2017, Zvonimir Boban, then an executive at Fifa and a former Croatian and AC Milan star, declared him “the voice of football in the world”.
Succession plan
As for Operation Shrimp, all those concerned are happy with its conclusion, and we move on. Like Operation Mincemeat, perhaps someone will adapt it into a West End musical. An Evening with Gary Lineker ran for two years. Maybe Hugh Grant could play Gary. My children suggest Brian Cox, channelling his performance as Logan Roy, play me. I have an idea or two about who should take on the roles of the BBC hierarchy, but best if I leave that to your imagination.
They think it’s all over?
[See also: The combat zone]
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This article appears in the 20 Nov 2024 issue of the New Statesman, Combat Zone