Piers Morgan has urged 'good friend' Gary Lineker to lead an attack on the BBC's recent decision to abolish the free licence fee for over 75s.
It comes after the broadcaster published its annual salary list of highest-paid stars Match of the Day presenter Gary topped, after pocketing between £1,750,000-£1,754,999 last year.
Speaking on Wednesday's Good Morning Britain, Piers urged Gary to use his position and take to Twitter to publicly call out the broadcaster.
Piers fired: "If I was Gary Lineker, I would come out and whack this, I would, I would call their bluff
"He fights for every other underdog on Twitter, he’s a good friend of mine, I completely defend him on this, I don’t think he’s to blame.”
"If I were Gary I would come out on Twitter this morning and attack the decision to take the TV licences away from the pensioners, I would."
“It would be a very brave thing for him to do," Piers continued. "I think he would earn a lot of favours, he’s just getting killed, he’s just getting killed through no fault of his own.
“He’s getting paid the market rate, in fact I would argue less than he could get anywhere else, if ITV came in for Gary Lineker now, they would pay him more than he gets at the BBC, I guarantee it.
“It’s a fact, people may not like it, you can obviously say a nurse gets thirty to forty grand a year, if they’re lucky £20,000.
“And so you can get X gazillion nurses for a Lineker but that’s not how the reality of the market place works in television.”
Piers then admitted that he and co-host Susanna Reid got paid a 'gross' amount but their ITV salary came from advertisers rather than the public.
The 54-year old then added that he fears the BBC's decision to axe the free licence fee for over 75s could be 'the beginning of the end.'
"If they double down of this TV licence thing, if they tell 3.5 million pensioners we’re effectively going to risk imprisoning you if you don’t pay your licence whilst dishing out millions to their celebrity talent roster and their own executives.
“You watch what happened I’m telling you, it’s the beginning of the end for the BBC because once you lose public trust, then the public desire to help you by giving you money for what you do disappears.”
