I’ve never been one to mourn celebrity deaths, but when BBC presenter James Alexander Gordon passed away in 2014, I can remember feeling a profound sense of sadness.
His voice became the soundtrack to my early life, being religiously projected over the airwaves at 5 o’clock on a Saturday evening as hot air blasted from the heaters of my dad’s car in a desperate attempt to warm feet frozen by 90 minutes on the terraces.
Hubert Bath’s rousing theme tune, Out of the Blue, blared from the speakers before Peter Jones, Des Lynam, John Inverdale or Mark Pougatch gave the day’s sporting headlines, ending with; “But first, a full check of today’s classified football results, read as always by James Alexander Gordon”. And on he came.
Gordon, or JAG as he was known to his colleagues, read the classified football results on BBC radio for 40 years before stepping down in 2013 due to a cancer that would eventually kill him, his wonderful inflections and stresses woven into the fabric of British broadcasting.
His legacy is not dissimilar, in my opinion, to that of Gary Lineker’s, who stepped down as Match of the Day presenter on Sunday after a long-running tussle with the BBC and, seemingly, all who despise it.
After more than a quarter of a century in the job, I find it hard to think of the famous ‘Drum Majorette’ theme tune without picturing one of his classic witticisms following in its wake, such is the astonishing mark he has left on the BBC’s flagship football programme.
His character, professionalism and passion for the job allowed him to do something only true broadcasting greats do, which is to have a significant and lasting impact on the programme or format in which they present.
A recent poll of 2,000 Brits by McVitie’s listed two broadcasters among the top ‘British icons’ of the last 100 years, with Sir David Attenborough and Sir Trevor McDonald both featuring alongside such heavyweights as Freddie Mercury, Stephen Hawking and Diana, Princess of Wales.
In time, I believe Lineker will be ranked among them too.
Sure, he’s got opinions. He gets uppity when immigrants are scapegoated by the most senior politicians in the land and has, in his words, a “little opinion” about the mass murder of thousands of children in Gaza. But last I checked, Attenborough and McDonald have well-documented beliefs on human-caused climate change and racism. Perhaps we’re just evolved enough not to deem those ‘opinions’.
Unshackled from the strict impartiality rules of the BBC and the widespread belief that BBC sports presenters shouldn’t be real people, Lineker will be free to throw whatever opinions he pleases to the mob of hungry, pitchfork-wielding Daily Express readers.
But I doubt he will.
The BBC moulds broadcasters more than we sometimes care to realise. Lineker, for all his faults, is rarely impolite, he is considerate and he places professionalism above all else.
But most of all, he is a brilliant presenter, and Match of the Day won’t be the same without him.
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