When Des Lynam hung up his moustache and walked away from the Match of the Day presenting gig in 1999, BBC bosses were faced with a conundrum. Lynam was popular with viewers and a sporting polymath but had jumped ship for ITV after they doubled his pay. Who could fill his boots on such a shoestring budget?
The answer was Gary Lineker. Described by the BBC, at the time, as having a “relaxed style”, Lineker was already familiar to viewers thanks not only to a stellar on-pitch career, but various presenting jobs across the corporation. He had appeared on Radio 5 Live and Grandstand, as well as a stint as a captain on They Think It’s All Over, a comedy panel show. And as the lights came up on the 1999/2000 Premier League season, he found himself in one of the biggest jobs in football media, presiding over the flagship highlights package of a season that featured 23 goals from his future sofa-mate, Alan Shearer. It was the start of a glittering 25-year tenure in the role – which the BBC has confirmed will conclude next May – that would turn him from a predatory striker to one of the nation’s top broadcasters, and then into a powerful, and often controversial, media mogul.
Lineker was born in 1960 in Leicester – a city famous in the Sixties for the creatives, like Joe Orton and Graham Chapman, who had run away from it – and there was little in his childhood to point to future footballing stardom. As a teenager he captained the Leicestershire Schools cricket team – yes, cricket – for five years, believing he’d have “more chance afterwards in cricket than football”.
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