(Photograph: Liton Ali, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
In a brilliantly written piece for spiked, titled ‘Gary Lineker: patron saint of the over-privileged’, the inestimable Julie Burchill skewers His Holiness for his shameless self-promotion and utter lack of self-awareness. When it comes to virtue-signalling, as described previously in these pages, Gary Lineker really is the virtue-signallers’ virtue-signaller. And, according to Burchill, Lineker intends to write a memoir. That would be in addition to all his other books which were on fascinating subjects such as he, himself and being Gary Lineker. Mind you, he has been busy these past few years.
Your correspondent has been pondering the potential title for Gazza’s forthcoming memoir. I fear My Struggle has already been taken and may lead to accusations of antisemitism. The last thing Gary would want to do is to have a pop at anyone based on their beliefs or background. Unless that background was white working class, and they were a tad irritated by their city centres, hostels and hotels filling up with people who ought not to be there. Voted Brexit did you? Then you make Gary ashamed to be British. Sadly, not ashamed enough for him to emigrate to one of the many fine countries that I am sure would welcome his liberal leftward leading views. Why not try Pakistan, Afghanistan or Burkina Faso Gary? They look like nice places.
Saint Gary is famous for never getting a yellow card in his footballing career (yes, he used to be a professional footballer). The other side of that card is that he never won any major league titles. He took part in an FA Cup win with Spurs but, notably in that game, he missed a penalty and had a goal disallowed. With England he achieved what England have usually achieved since 1966, nothing. He is lauded as a great footballer; he also had a reputation for poaching (keeping out of the action and just wating for goal scoring chances) winning himself golden boot awards and a FIFA fair player award. A great title for his memoir would be Talentless and Boring. That has certainly been a cardinal feature of his career since leaving football, which is when most people began to get to know him through his incessant, incisive and highly paid football punditry. Here is an example: ‘And what do you think, Alan?’
Another potential winner of a title could be How They Clapped. He would claim it was a reference to his voluminous, but largely ineffective, goal scoring. But he could also slip in the (as yet unverified) story about his spontaneous standing ovation in M&S. Aren’t people always already standing up in supermarkets? Was that the same M&S where he was caught on camera without the mandatory face mask during Covid?
At least he didn’t get involved in virtue-signalling about Covid, did he? Oh, dear me, but it turns out he did. On behalf of the British Red Cross he helped launch their Kindness Manifesto. Here he included such gems as telling folk how important it was to ‘keep busy’. He and his Match Of The Day co-hosts, ventriloquist dummy Alan Shearer and motor mouth Ian Wright, would ‘keep working’. Yes, Gary, that is because you three had jobs and are also multi-millionaires. The folk you were preaching to were largely stuck at home on reduced rations on furloughed pay. Still, I am sure your words brought some comfort and not a little amusement.
He claims he gets a friendly reception wherever he goes. Clearly, he has not put this one to the test in Aldi or Lidl. We are kept in the dark about what the M&S ovation was for, but it was probably connected with his tireless work on behalf of well educated refugees whom he welcomes into his house regularly for a month of repose from the rigours of their university studies. Well, he did it once, for ‘about a month’ which is what Gary calls a fortnight.
It transpires that it all went belly up when they discovered there was only room for one person of colour in Gary’s massive mansion.
Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.
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