A long run of own goals...

OCT 2016: With critics saying supposed child refugees in Calais looked older than 18, BBC presenter Gary Lineker tweets: ‘ The treatment by some towards these young refugees is hideously racist.’ DEC 2018: fellow BBC broadcaster Jonathan Agnew, a cricket pundit, writes in a tweet to Lineker: ‘I’d be sacked if I followed your example.’ AUG 2022: Lineker criticises Tory legislation, tweeting: ‘As a politician how could you ever, under any circumstances, bring yourself to vote for pumping sewage into our seas?’ SEP 2022: BBC boss Tim Davie says reining in Lineker’s tweeting was a ‘work in progress’.

OCT 2022 The BBC finds Lineker breached its impartiality rules over comments he made about the Conservatives having ‘Russian donors’. JAN 14, 2023: Lineker retweets a post calling Home Secretary Suella Braverman ‘utterly devoid of sensibility’ after her exchange with a Holocaust survivor.

FEB 15: Lineker posts from an airport arrivals queue: ‘Another monster queue at customs at a European city next to deserted lanes for EU members. The delights of Brexit.’ FEB 20: He shares a video that calls for illegal immigrants arriving on small boats to be granted citizenship. He wrote: ‘Why leave them to fester in a hotel with the far-Right screaming abuse at them? Give them legal status and get them going.’ FEB 27: Appears to mock Rishi Sunak’s landmark EU deal over Northern Ireland, writing: ‘So we’re getting Brexit done... again.’

MAR 7: He calls Mrs Braverman’s measures to stop the small boats ‘beyond awful’ and ‘an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s...’