Listening to multi-millionaire Gary Lineker opining on the state of the world is exactly what licence fee payers are coughing up money for, says Mark Dolan

Rumours abound that stressed-out staff at the BBC Match of the Day programme are worried about the possible departure of Gary Lineker after 25 years in the top job.

What a nightmare! How will viewers cope if someone else who’s far cheaper and less political reads a teleprompter and introduces football clips?

There’s something about the way that Saint Gary says ‘Here’s the latest action from Selhurst Park’ which marks him as irreplaceable.

No one else could do that. No one else could say ‘Here’s the latest action from Selhurst Park’. Not like he does. It’s a rare gift.

And if, God forbid, he does go, Match of the Day viewers will miss hearing this ex-footballer’s views on climate change.

After all, he loves Greta Thunberg even more than he loves Alan Shearer.

His views on Britain’s migration policies involve comparing anything that he doesn’t like to 1930s Germany.

And, of course, his measured and well-balanced assessment of the October 7 massacre, the worst single attack on Jewish people since the actual Holocaust, which he sensitively described as the ‘Hamas thing’.

There is no way that Match of the Day can survive without Saint Gary Lineker. In fact, £1.3million a year, his current salary, is an insult to this intellectual colossus.

I would double it and rebrand our national state broadcaster as Gary Lineker’s BBC.

Listening to a multi-millionaire opining on the state of the world is exactly what licence fee payers, including poverty-stricken old ladies shivering in their homes this winter, are coughing up their money for.

In fact, it takes over 8,000 licence fee payers alone just to cover Gary’s annual salary. Worth every penny. What an own goal it would be to lose him.