Shameless Lineker’s £300 a minute

... as £1.8m a year star’s male agent blames WOMEN agents for the BBC gender pay gap

GARY Lineker continued to mock the BBC pay row yesterday as he sunned himself in Beverly Hills.

Having posted a photo of himself by the rooftop pool of his £1,000-a-night hotel, the BBC pundit picked fights with his critics on social media.

He denied he was ‘gloating’ over his £1.8 million wages, insisting he was demonstrating a ‘ sense of humour’ for his tweet complaining that Chris Evans got paid more than him.

But he faced a backlash from scores of ordinary Britons who compared his worth against firefighters, nurses and teachers.

Meanwhile, Lineker’s agent risked deepening the row by suggesting female agents were to blame for the gender pay gap.

A rough calculation suggests Lineker, who is not on air as much as some of the BBC’s stars, pockets £300 a minute – or £18,000 an hour – for his time on screen. His weekly Match of the Day slot, plus appearances on Have I Got News For You, the Euro 2016 tournament, FA Cup and Sports Personality of the Year added up to approximately 6,000 minutes last year.

The figure does not include any time he spends preparing for his shows.

Lineker has been lapping up the sunshine from the rooftop pool of the opulent Waldorf Astoria hotel in Beverly Hills, where suites cost between £1,000 and £2,600 a night.

The former England striker spent some of the time defending himself on Twitter over his wage, which is the equivalent of 12,500 licence fees.

It came as his agent Jon Holmes suggested female agents were to blame for the gender pay gap.

He said: ‘It is a gross failure for an agent if their clients are doing the same job (as men) on less money.

‘Maybe women feel happier being represented by women and women are not as tough.

‘At the end of the day it’s up to people to negotiate and for the negotiators to push for what they are worth.’

On Wednesday, Lineker, 56, joked about the furore by tweeting: ‘This whole BBC salary exposure is an absolute outrage... I mean, how can Chris Evans be on more than me?’

Radio 2 DJ Evans, who earns up to £2.25 million a year, is the only BBC star paid more than Lineker, whose tweet prompted uproar. One person replied: ‘All grossly over- paid talentless fools. BBC is a disgrace to broadcasting’, while another said of Lineker: ‘So out of touch, it’s scary. We pay him – why can’t we sack him?’

A third tweeted: ‘Yeah, make a joke of it, Gary. You’re so out of touch with reality, it’s frightening.’

Lineker’s lavish BBC salary is not his only source of income.

He is rumoured to earn a further £ 1 million fronting BT Sport’s Champions League coverage, and since 1994 has had a lucrative deal as the face of Walkers Crisps.

Lineker – said to be worth more than £12 million – was originally paid £200,000 to front the ads, but that fee has since risen to a reported £1.5 million.

‘Over-paid, talentless fools’