Gary Lineker: A sorry end to a BBC career

Gary Lineker: A sorry end to a BBC career

This is a sorry end to a long BBC career. Gary Lineker was among the corporation's highest-paid presenters for a reason - he is popular with audiences, knowledgeable and brilliant at his job.

But it's an understatement to suggest he has also caused problems for his BBC bosses over the years, as their high-profile football host began to morph into a presenter with opinions that he voiced on social media.

In the end, those two things were increasingly in conflict.

This has always been about reputation management for the BBC. Lineker had already, in the eyes of BBC bosses, caused the corporation damage with previous social media posts. Mistakenly sharing a video about Zionism which included a rat emoji was the final straw.

It was difficult to see how he could continue presenting for the corporation, particularly at a time when the BBC is enmeshed in another controversy surrounding a documentary about Gaza, which it pulled after discovering the child narrator was the son of a Hamas official.

I think what's different is that on this occasion, Lineker regrets his actions. He has appeared bullish about previous posts, saying that while he regretted damaging the BBC, he didn't believe, for example, that comparing the language of a Conservative asylum policy to that of 1930s Germany was wrong.

But last week he crossed the line.

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