When I find Gary Lineker, nestled in a plump armchair in the back corner of a Soho basement, he looks remarkably fit, almost weightless. The footballer turned celebrated BBC Sport presenter has endured a rumbustious few weeks. Today, he is dapper in a mufti wardrobe of a stone grey knitted polo shirt and navy slacks, while those signature black-framed glasses perch on noticeably glassy skin. “It’s not too bad for an old person,” he quips, to my compliment. Lineker, it seems, has settled back into life off the front pages.
It is a world away from the man I might have met last month. With one death knell comment, he successfully fired himself into the epicentre of the impartiality row causing the BBC’s existential crisis. Having presented Match of the Day since 1999 following his 16-year football career, and boasting the public-funded broadcaster’s biggest annual salary of £1.35 million, he is — whether he likes it or not — one of its most recognisable faces. And while BBC chairman Tim Davie maintains that “extraordinarily high standards of impartiality across our content is vital”, Lineker slammed the Government. His March 7 tweet likened the Conservative Party to the Nazis, condemning Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s language (“invasion”, “rapists”, “criminals”) around the Government’s Rwanda asylum plans as “not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s”.
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