Whatever next! Gary Lineker talks us through his menopausal hot flushes...?

PRINCE William said this week that the Windrush generation had been ‘profoundly wronged.’ Unveiling a statue at Waterloo station in their honour, he also said that racism remained an ‘all-toofamiliar experience’ for black people, and that equality had ‘yet to come to pass’ in Britain.

Too true. Just ask Gary Lineker, Your Highness. The tedious, crisp-munching football pundit has claimed he received racial abuse during his playing career because of his ‘darker skin.’ excuse me?

This came as a shock to absolutely everyone, because surely on the coffee-shop menu of life, Gary would be down at the whipped-cream vanilla latte end of proceedings, but apparently this is not the case. He was a double espresso man all along, only no one noticed, not even his mum.

Yes, OK. There was that year when Gary was distinctly caramel venti when he came back from a holiday in the Maldives, and I remember at least one Match Of The Day broadcast when an enthusiastic application of panstick made him look a bit Frappuccino. But is this really enough upon which to build a life as an oppressed minority?

The richly remunerated BBC pundit described how — hankies at the ready — he was subjected to racial abuse both at school and during his football career. ‘I was this tiny, geeky kid, with darkish skin and I had pretty much racist abuse, although I’m as english as they come,’ he said.

Pause for a second right there. As english as they come? Lineker implies that being white equates with being english, which is deeply offensive and wrong, as any Windrush descendant would explain if he bothered to ask.

What is irritating is if anyone else said something so inflammatory, there would be a huge outcry, resulting in Mr Lineker being cancelled and his membership of SLICK (Smug Liberal Intelligentsia Condescending Know-Alls) revoked.

Yet somehow, this virtue- signalling jumbo hypocrite gets away with everything and anything. He is against elitism, but accepted a visiting fellowship to an Oxford college. He earns a seven-figure salary, paid for by the seething silent majority via an unfair tax, but posed on an RMT picket line, tacitly supporting a strike that inconveniences millions of hard-working people. He champions fitness and nutrition in schools, but flogs crisps to kiddies.

Despite regularly expressing his disapproval of Qatar as a World Cup host, he will shortly be travelling there to broadcast for the Beeb, comparing himself to Ukraine warzone journalists who do not support the Putin regime. Dear God.

He’s not all bad because at least he once hosted a refugee for 20 days, an act of generosity that is more than most of us have managed. Yet with Lineker, a different set of rules apply, even when it comes to the touchy subject of race relations, imagined or otherwise. expounding on the racist abuse he has suffered, he added: ‘even in professional football I had that a couple of times, I wouldn’t ever name any names.’

But why not? If this social justice warrior was serious about playing the race card, he should name and shame those who were racist towards him — otherwise we might not believe him.

And why has he not mentioned this before? The former england striker has been afforded plenty of opportunities. Like in 2015 when discussing racism in football, he said: ‘It was dreadful when I played. Team-mates like John Barnes in those days were treated disgustingly. It used to make you feel sick.’

A year earlier, in a spat that I still can’t get my head around, Lineker used Twitter to castigate a journalist who had suggested that his then wife, Danielle Bux, was wearing too much fake tan and was ‘shimmering orange’ — am I getting this right?

‘An uncalled-for racist attack on a woman you’ve never met,’ fumed the SLICK supremo. ‘Inexcusably racist!’

WHAT? He could have used that opportunity to expound on why his wife, who is mixed race, was mistaken for a white woman while he was mistaken for a black man. As this weird, hot summer of discontent drags on, Lineker selfidentifying as a black man makes a kind of perfect sense. It had to happen! In the league table of liberal suffering it is no longer enough simply to be seen to sympathise with the correct causes. You must suffer; you, too, must bleed if you are to be taken seriously as a fellow martyr on the path of true woke.

Next week: Me And My Menopause. Gary Lineker talks us through the hell of his hot flushes and how he coped with vaginal atrophy.