“I almost slipped up!” – Gary Lineker nearly broke ITV’s strict rule during his special appearance.
Gary Lineker shared that he almost slipped up and broke a strict ITV rule during his surprise guest spot on their World Cup coverage on Saturday. Known for being with the BBC for over 20 years, Lineker showed up on ITV just before Germany’s win against the Ivory Coast.
While working on his Netflix show Rest is Football in New York, Lineker joined the high-end Brooklyn studio with Ian Wright, Gary Neville, Duncan Ferguson, and host Laura Woods. He took part in a funny intro where he started to introduce the coverage like he usually does for the BBC, but Woods quickly interrupted, saying, “Woah Gary, that’s my job!” Lineker laughed and said old habits die hard.
Even though his new show is doing great, Lineker almost made a big mistake while hosting Rest is Football. On that show, swearing is allowed, and Joe Cole took full advantage when he said he was “f***ing exhausted” after scoring a goal in the 2006 World Cup. Not long after, Lineker said he nearly dropped an expletive live on ITV, but managed to hold it back.
“I came so close to dropping the f-bomb on ITV today,” he confessed. “We get used to it—Joe swore there. At one point live, I went ‘ffff’ and stopped myself. I sucked it in! After almost 30 years on TV, you know better, but doing this show where swearing happens, I was really close and just pulled back.”
In the UK, Ofcom regulates language and doesn’t allow strong swearing before 9pm, so if Lineker had said the word, it would have caused a problem since his ITV appearance was much earlier.
On Netflix, he was more relaxed, even telling Micah Richards to “shut the f*** up” and jokingly cutting him off when Richards called him a “traitor.”
Lineker explained that his ITV guest spot was to promote his upcoming reality game show The Box, which airs on ITV in September, and to help promote Rest is Football, where he got two mentions.
“I was just there for professional reasons, Micah,” he said. When Richards teased him, Lineker fired back, “Says the guy who works for pretty much every TV channel known to man!”