He strikes, he scores!
First he played for England and now he hosts one of TV’s most popular shows. Former footballing hero Gary Lineker reveals how he became a national treasure Interview |Jeremy Taylor IT MAY SEEM SURPRISING now, but when Gary Lineker first swapped his football boots for a BBC microphone and television studio, many wondered whether the baby-faced former striker could handle the pressure. [...]
First he played for England and now he hosts one of TV’s most popular shows.
Former footballing hero Gary Lineker reveals how he became a national treasure
Interview |Jeremy Taylor
IT MAY SEEM SURPRISING now, but when Gary
Lineker first swapped his football boots for a BBC
microphone and television studio, many wondered
whether the baby-faced former striker could handle
the pressure. After all, Lineker had consistently been
viewed as football’s Mr Nice Guy. Despite a glittering
career playing in the world’s biggest tournaments,
England’s former captain had never felt the glare of
the cameras quite so intensely before.
“To be honest, I was absolutely terrified,” Lineker
admits. “There were plenty of people who thought
my presenting on Match Of The Day was just too wooden
at first,” he recalls. “Being the anchor is nerve-wracking
because there are so many people who really know their
football in this country. Plus you have a panel of experts to
deal with, a producer shouting instructions in your ear and
all kinds of mayhem going on.”
“To be honest, I was absolutely terrified,” Lineker
admits. “There were plenty of people who thought
my presenting on Match Of The Day was just too wooden
at first,” he recalls. “Being the anchor is nerve-wracking
because there are so many people who really know their
football in this country. Plus you have a panel of experts to
deal with, a producer shouting instructions in your ear and
all kinds of mayhem going on.”
BBC television’s flagship sports show may be fighting
a constant battle with Sky Sports for screening rights.
However, with a pedigree stretching back to 1964 and a
theme tune as recognisable as the national anthem, it still
rates as a must-see for most fans. Now, having been a pundit
on it since 1995, Lineker is almost part of the furniture.
“It didn’t come naturally,” he confesses, “but I worked at
Interview | Jeremy Taylor
it. With TV there’s no way you can practise, you just have to
learn as you go along – and learn fast.”
As a Match Of The Day commentator, Lineker had joined a
distinguished ranking that included very famous British faces
like David Coleman, Jimmy Hill and Des Lynam, of whom
Lineker says: “Des was a hit with the ladies. He was very selfassured,
witty and good company – the perfect person to curl
up with on the settee on a quiet Saturday night.”
It’s a description that sits equally well with Lineker, so
perhaps it was little surprise that when Lynam defected to
ITV in 1999, the former footballer’s youthful, cheeky smile
made him the perfect candidate to replace him as anchorman
– although when it came to his own performance in the hot
seat, Lineker isn’t so sure. “Thankfully, it wasn’t quite bad
enough for them to kick me out. It probably took three years
to get comfortable enough to become myself,” he says. “Then
people decide whether they really like you or not.”
Gary Winston Lineker was born in Leicester in1960 – the
middle name was chosen because he shares a birthday
with the former prime minister Winston Churchill and like
his namesake, the young schoolboy soon showed he was
a natural leader. “When I was 12 I played Sunday league
football,” he recalls. “One weekend Leicester City’s chief talent
scout came to watch a game and questioned my granddad
about the young striker scoring all the goals – it was me.”
The young Gary started training with the Leicester youth
team twice a week before joining the club as an apprentice
when he turned 16. However, until that point there was
every chance he might have made a career out of striking
a different kind of ball, at cricket. “I played for school and
county at cricket, too,” he says “To be honest, I thought I
was more likely to become a cricketer than a footballer. But
cricket took a back seat when a football opportunity came
along. Leicester City came up with an offer and I took it on.”
Like most teenagers in the 1970s, Gary spent his evenings
and weekends kicking or hitting a ball around the local park.
“In those days, there were no massive distractions like there
are for children now – computers, electronic games and
hundreds of channels on TV. All we did was just play sport,” he
says. “That has had an effect on the future of football, not just
here but in other parts of the world as well, but the coaching
for talented players has improved, so hopefully we will
produce more home-grown talent, but it will take a while.”
Talking of home-grown, should we be looking for future
talent in Lineker’s four sons? The footballer admits that Harry,
Tobias, Angus and George (whom he had with his ex-wife
Michelle) all like to kick a ball around – but he won’t be
drawn on their varying degrees of skill.
What he is more keen to talk about, however, is leukaemia,
the cancer that his eldest son, George, now 16, had as a child.
George went on to make a full recovery, but the footballer
has never forgotten the difficult times while his son was in
hospital. Hence he is now a patron of both the Leukaemia
Research Fund and Cancer and Leukaemia in Childhood (CLIC).
Lineker indulges other hobbies too, such as golf (he has a
handicap of four) and snooker. Then there’s the languages:
he learnt Spanish when he moved to Barcelona FC in 1986
and mastered Japanese while playing for Nagoya Grampus
Eight towards the end of his footballing career in 1993. “A
lot of people think players don’t have brains, but many had
to leave school at 16 to train as footballers,” he points out.
“They didn’t get a chance to go to university or college.”
But what an opportunity Lineker did get: his goal tally
for England between 1984 and 1992 at 48 goals in 80
appearances put him just one behind Sir Bobby Charlton. He
won the Golden Boot Award for scoring the most goals at
the World Cup in Mexico in 1986. His fellow players voted
him Footballer of the Year in 1986 and he was awarded an
OBE in 1992. Despite this, the striker endured endless ridicule
when he appeared as a team captain on the TV quiz show
They Think It’s All Over. “They teased me all the time because
I had a reputation as a goal hanger [a player who specialises
in standing within 12 inches of the goal to score easy goals],”
he says. “They would say I was lethal from 12 inches!”
An ability to take a bit of a ribbing and a clean-cut image
also earned Lineker further lucrative opportunities away
from the pitch, such as the Walkers crisps campaign which
he signed up for in 1994 for what has turned out to be one
of the longest-running contracts in TV advertising history.
So what, if anything, makes ‘Mr Nice Guy’ lose his cool? If
there is something, Lineker’s not telling. “I do have the nice
guy image and that probably stems back to when I was a
footballer, because I was never booked by the referee and
never sent off,” he explains, though adds jokily: “It’s because
I never got close enough to tackle anyone!”
Ask him if he has a game plan though, and he’s not so sure.
“I used to think football is difficult enough when you are in
control of yourself, let alone when you have lost control with
your emotions, so I was always a pretty icy-cold person on
the football pitch and didn’t let things worry me too much.”
On or off the pitch, it’s a policy that seems to have worked.
As a teenager Gary Lineker
helped out on his family’s
stall at Leicester market.
Walkers crisps (in whose ads Lineker stars, like in the one above) briefly launched
a flavour in his honour called Salt ’n’ Lineker.
The striker made his first
big-screen appearance in
the Brit-hit movie Bend It
Like Beckham but says he has
no further acting ambitions.
His golf buddies include
fellow football pundits Alan
Hansen and Lee Dixon.
Lineker was awarded
honorary degrees from both
Leicester and Loughborough
Universities in 1992.
