NADINE DORRIES: I saw dark truth behind Stacey Solomon's act of self-sabotage and Gary Lineker's downfall. This is the hidden reality about today's TV celebrities
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The slow-motion car crash that was Gary Lineker’s tenure at the BBC has finally become the smoking pile of wreckage that some of us predicted.
Lineker has used his status and celebrity on a number of occasions to flout the broadcaster’s impartiality guidelines with deeply political outbursts on social media.
While many ordinary viewers struggled to afford the licence fee, he was gobbling up a vast £1.35million salary, making him the best-paid broadcaster in the whole Corporation.
Then yesterday, the Match Of The Day presenter stepped down for good. If his departure seemed inevitable, it took far too long. Lineker’s pay, pronouncements and arrogance were so far out of touch with viewers, it was surprising he was still on our screens at all.
During my time as Culture Secretary, I held a number of meetings with the Director-General, Tim Davie. I told him the BBC needed radical change and that it should axe the licence fee – which I viewed as a regressive tax – in favour of a funding model which didn’t penalise pensioners and the poor.
But I also said the Corporation should abandon its disastrous habit of pumping gargantuan sums of money into the wallets of puffed-up celebrities.
Lineker is a case in point.
The ‘face’ of BBC football coverage for more than two decades, it seems he was entirely free to break the rules lesser mortals must obey.
But he is not alone. And having worked so hard to create such ‘national treasures’, perhaps it’s no surprise that the BBC looks reluctant to hold them to account when they err. Transformed into demi-gods, they have the cloak of BBC protection thrown around them, making them feel they are untouchable.
The once-respected newsreader Huw Edwards, king of state occasions, resigned in disgrace last year following claims he paid a young person for sexually explicit images. He was later convicted of possessing indecent images of children.
Yet we learned at the weekend that BBC executives knew complaints had been made about his inappropriate behaviour as far back as 2012. Was nothing learned from the Savile case?
Comedian Russell Brand was another figure given towering national status, despite – as it emerged – widespread warnings about his lewd behaviour.
While Lineker’s case is very different from those of Brand and Edwards, the point is that the BBC spent huge sums of money propelling all three men into the TV stratosphere.
No doubt talented in their own ways (Lineker was certainly a brilliant footballer), I don’t think any of them came close to justifying the wealth and fame they garnered at the BBC.
Rich rewards and great influence are thrust upon stars like these. They take top billing in our daily lives – even as the power drains from the organisation that helped create them and is placed on the individuals instead.
Stacey Solomon – presenter of the BBC’s Bafta-nominated Sort Your Life Out – is the latest to get the ‘she’s so special’ treatment.
Lured away from ITV’s Loose Women with the promise of taking her career to the next level, BBC executives hoped her bright-eyed, girl-next-door appeal would be ratings gold and would draw in young mothers and families. Then, last week, came Ms Solomon’s act of self-sabotage.
Distressed that her show did not receive a Bafta, Ms Solomon horrified BBC bosses with a long social media video rant complaining bitterly at the ‘snub’.
Such outbursts reek of privilege. More to the point, it shines a light on what can happen when someone is feted as a celebrity without real justification. Ordinary rules somehow don’t apply.
How can the BBC deal with this corrosive culture of entitlement? How can it nip the ‘Lineker effect’ in the bud?
I believe Tim Davie is a good man attempting to manage a monolithic organisation embedded in impenetrable Left-wing culture. And if I were still in government today, my advice would be the same: step up and focus on content, not so-called stars.
Ring the changes and give others a chance in front of the camera. Why not have two or three presenters where you currently have one?
This, we are told, will be the approach taken by Match Of The Day next season. Perhaps the Beeb has been listening.
But there is more to be done. The BBC is losing half a million licence-fee payers a year. It can’t go on like this.
Is the Corporation prepared to embrace the future or will it persist as a dinosaur trudging towards oblivion?
The viewers have the power of the remote in their hands. Change or die.
A 'furry' tale you couldn't make up
On a recent podcast, the great Ann Widdecombe said that ‘the quality of parliamentarians is the lowest I can ever remember’.
Ann isn’t wrong.
When writing my last book, Downfall, about the sad decline of the Conservative party, I was shocked to find myself exposed to a number of risqué and sexually explicit WhatsApp threads – from MPs! –containing images and messages I would rather have not seen.
Last weekend, we learned that a senior Tory had been photographed dressed in a dog costume and led by a leash.
This, he had accidentally posted on a WhatsApp thread.
I’m told the picture revealed him to be a ‘furry’, which, in case (like me) you didn’t know, is someone who enjoys dressing up as an animal as a sexual fantasy. ‘A furry’. You really couldn’t make it up.
I’m loving the photographs of Judy Finnigan celebrating her 77th birthday with her family.
She looks radiant, beautiful and happy. She gives hope to all women who have faced their battles in life – which is most of us.
I hope I look as well as she does when I reach her age!
Spacey's comeback
Kevin Spacey is about to receive a lifetime achievement award at the Cannes Film Festival for his ‘enduring impact on cinema the arts and decades of artistic brilliance’. He has certainly bounced back from the abyss.
In 2017, he was fired from Netflix’s House Of Cards following sexual misconduct claims – which he has always denied. A civil case against him in America collapsed.
And in 2023, at Southwark Crown Court, Spacey was found not guilty of sexual assault.
Now, he’s clearly on the comeback trail. Last year, Spacey won a best performance trophy at the Folkestone Independent Film Awards. Then came Italy’s Nations Award for Lifetime Achievement at a gala in Taormina, Sicily.
Spacey clearly wants back in. And who would bet against him?
