It's Hard To Pinpoint Exactly When The BBC Lost Its Mind

Could it possibly be that, seven days ago, when Gary Lineker replied to a somewhat random member of the public on Twitter with some slightly incendiary but still carefully worded criticism of the government, it actually just wasn't that much of a big deal?

- Tom Peck

That maybe, you know, it didn't need to lead every single BBC news bulletin for almost a full week? That it didn't need to lead to a flagship sports programme being broadcast without presenters for the first time in its 60-year history - which is more than any pandemic or war has ever managed to achieve?

It's hard to pinpoint the precise moment when the BBC lost its mind. Certainly, it was long gone by Sunday night, when the host of the BBC's News at Ten was sitting inside Broadcasting House in central London, doing live interviews with their media correspondent, who was standing in the street outside Broadcasting House, about what he "was hearing" about the news company at which both of them work - which was that there were "hopes of a deal in the next 24 hours".

This is the kind of reporting that usually happens when wars end, when nation states break up and new ones are formed. Or at least when, for roughly the ten millionth time, Brexit doesn't actually get done. They were right, though. There was a deal in the next 24 hours; it happened yesterday morning, though "deal" is not quite the word. As deals go, there was about as much give and take from both sides as there was at the Treaty of Versailles.

At the end of one of the most bizarre spectacles ever seen in British public life, even by the standards of the last few fully deranged years, Lineker will be back on air at the weekend; he has not apologised; he has not deleted any of the apparently offending tweets; and he has not agreed to refrain from posting political comments in the future, either.