As so often when one ventures into delicate parts, expectation outstrips reality; or put another way, there’s only so long you can defer gratification before you go and put on the kettle instead. Some wondered whether, like the rapture, it would ever really happen. But they should never have doubted; for cometh the hour, cometh the man.
The hour was 10.30pm on the first day of the new Premier League season, and the man was Gary Lineker, who had promised to present Match of the Day in his underpants should his beloved Leicester City win the title. When the pledge was made, it seemed as though Vardy, Mahrez and co couldn’t possibly fend off their far more celebrated challengers; but as one after the other of the big teams choked, the thought of Gary au naturel – or nearly – loomed ever larger.
It was as though MoTD had been reimagined for the era of Cheeky Nandos, top bantz and the striptease aesthetic of every structured reality show. As the title music parped to its climax, there was Gary, sporting a nicely starched pair of white Leicester City boxers, body impressively tanned with a touch of pink at the décolletage, hair sharply quiffed and musketeer beard neatly trimmed. Even those famous ears were behaving themselves. Benches had been pressed, chests expanded. You couldn’t help but think: bloody hell, 55.
Behind him, Alan Shearer was buttoned-up, in more ways than one, though Ian Wright seemed happier to play Ernie Wise to Lineker’s Morecambe; it fell to him to deliver the carefully scripted quip about not realising how cold the studio was.
But, as we all know, the real entertainment takes place on the second screen. Over on Twitter, the forest fire of debate quickly began to rage: they weren’t pants, they were shorts. It was a swizz, a BBC con, a terrible outrage perpetrated on the innocent and trusting viewers, who had expected nothing less than a royal blue posing pouch. As if we didn’t have enough febrile conspiracy theories to cope with already.
And there was more to come. After a couple of matches – including the collapse of Leicester at the unfancied Hull, with the commentator noting that their performance had been pants – Lineker re-donned the uniform of media metrosexual man: the fitted blue shirt and chinos. Shearer and Wrighty visibly relaxed. Viewers at home unclenched their buttocks. The British Broadcasting Corporation’s flirtation with letting it all hang out was mercifully over.
All of which leads one to the true legacy of Lineker’s dare: what is wrong with this country? How far has it really come since Barbara Windsor’s bra zoomed off mid-aerobic in Carry on Camping? And, perhaps more to the point, would this ever have happened had Gary not been quite so evidently buff and, quite frankly, up for it? Nevertheless, all’s well that ends well – but let’s simply keep everything crossed that England’s newly appointed manager, “Big” Sam Allardyce doesn’t get any ideas.
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