Gary Lineker, the BBC and impartiality: what really happened?
The News Agents
Global
4.2 • 4.3K Ratings
🗓️ 19 May 2025
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Late on Friday, the Newsagents learnt that Gary Lineker could part ways with the BBC as soon as Monday. On today’s episode we piece together the conversations that explain the timing, and ask where it leaves both parties. More widely, do the BBC rules work when it comes to talent tweeting? And was this relationship already over?
Later, the big EU - UK reset has provoked a lot of white flag rhetoric of surrender and defeat. But 8 years on from Brexit, might the problem really be that the government hasn’t been braver in terms of jump starting our economy?
And we look at the rumours of a cover up as Joe Biden announces his cancer diagnosis.
The News Agents is brought to you by HSBC UK - https://www.hsbc.co.uk/
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:09.0 | This is a global player original podcast. It's been a pleasure and a huge privilege working with the BBC for 30 years, |
| 0:17.7 | especially hosting Match of the Day, a programme that is so close to my heart and an integral |
| 0:22.8 | part of my life. I'd like to thank all of the quite brilliant, talented and lovely people, |
| 0:27.9 | both in front and behind the camera that I've worked alongside for three decades. You're at absolute |
| 0:33.9 | best. The relationship with the BBC has been long and wonderful, but it's the right |
| 0:38.9 | time for the organisation and myself to go our separate ways. That's Gary Lineker, who's hosted |
| 0:45.2 | Match of the Day for 26 years on the BBC. Next week, the end of the season will be the end |
| 0:52.0 | of Gary Lineker on the BBC. He is, we're told, |
| 0:56.0 | bowing out by mutual agreement. My understanding is not quite as mutual as it would seem. |
| 1:02.6 | If Gary Lineca hadn't jumped, he would have been pushed. Fraught negotiations took place |
| 1:08.0 | at the end of last week. But what do they tell us about the BBC today, |
| 1:13.1 | about impartiality, and about how it will treat its star presenters? Welcome to the newsagents. |
| 1:22.7 | The newsagents. It's John. It's Emily. And a little bit later, we're going to be talking about that |
| 1:28.6 | UK-EU reset and about the kind of language that perhaps inevitably surrounds anything still to do |
| 1:36.7 | with Brexit, the language of surrendering and the language of giving in to Europe. We're going to |
| 1:42.8 | come on to that later. We're going to start with Gary Lineca's departure from the BBC, which won't come, I don't think, |
| 1:49.7 | as a huge surprise. He was going to go anyway. The BBC had concocted a very unhappy compromise |
| 1:55.5 | whereby a rotor of presenters would do match of the day, but he would come back for FA Cup matches and |
| 2:02.7 | kind of put them all aside when it came to the World Cup final next year in the States. So it was |
| 2:08.9 | a pretty unhappy situation. And Gary Lineker, to use the footballing metaphor, the obvious one, |
| 2:14.1 | was already on a yellow card because of his social media posts. And what he posted |
... |
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