Gary Lineker has said that a prank which disrupted the BBC’s Match Of The Day broadcast with loud ‘sex noises’ made it difficult to take the coverage of the Wolves vs Liverpool match seriously.
BBC viewers were left stunned and confused during the flagship football program when the strange noises started to play intermittently throughout the coverage of Liverpool's FA Cup clash against Wolves, leading a number of viewers to say it was driving them ‘bonkers’.
Lineker was forced to address the issue on air, saying: "I don't know who is making that noise. It is toasty in this studio, it is noisy as well. I am not sure if someone is sending something on somebody's phone."
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The former England international later took to social media to share a picture of a phone, which he said was discovered on set. He posted: "Well, we found this taped to the back of the set. As sabotage goes it was quite amusing."
YouTube prankster Jarvo69, also known as BMWJarvo, has since said he was behind the stunt. In a clip posted online, he is seen appearing to call a phone just moments before the rude sounds are heard on the BBC's live coverage.
Appearing on Newsnight on Tuesday evening (January 17) shortly after the on-air incident occurred, Lineker told presenter Kirsty Wark that he found the trick funny despite raising concerns of a possible security issue.
“As pranks go, it was a good one,” he said. “Credit to them, it was funny I thought.”
He added that he instantly recognised the sounds from a popular practical joke where the sounds are sent to unsuspecting people in public.
He told Newsnight: "If you told me this morning that tonight I'd be on Newsnight talking about a porn scandal - I would have been terrified but thankfully, it was just something that happened in the studio.
“When it started, I did recognise that sound and I think we’ve all been done by that when you’ve opened a WhatsApp or something, or somebody has sent it to you as a trick on the train or when you're busy in people's company.
“It was quite difficult to cope with during the pre-match build up and I thought that maybe it’d gone to one of the pundit’s phone’s but then I thought no, it was too loud. Then we obviously worked out it was a prank.
"It was so loud I couldn't hear anything from Danny Murphy or Paul Ince, or even when I spoke to Alan Shearer. We had like five minutes more to go, is it going to stop? Every time we went to a piece of VT it stopped, so then I thought it was being done by somebody watching the TV and waiting until we come on."
The BBC later issued an apology on the incident, with a spokesperson saying: “We apologise to any viewers offended during the live coverage of the football this evening. We are investigating how this happened.”
Lineker said he did not know why the BBC felt the need to apologise over the prank but said there was a need to investigate how it was able to take place by stating that it ‘was a security issue’.
"The BBC have issued some sort of apology - I know not why," he explained. "We've certainly got nothing to apologise for."
Despite that, he said the prank made the game better and provided him and his co-presenting team with a good laugh.
Asked by Wark if the incident had been his most unusual special effect to date, Lineker responded: “I would say unquestionably so. It was quite hard to continue the pre-match build-up in a serious way when it was going on in the background.
"In all seriousness, the only thing authorities should be worried about is that if someone can plant a phone like that, it's a security issue for obvious reasons."
He added: “But it added to the whole game. We had a screamer of a goal, which was kind of the tone of the whole show.”
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