Eamonn Holmes says Holly and Phillip's friendship was 'false'
Yesterday, BBC announced Gary Lineker would be stepping down as longtime host of Match Of The Day amid him being their highest-paid star.
While Gary has yet to address the subject, Eamonn Holmes speculated that Gary may have been let go from the channel due to other reasons.
He said on GB News this morning: "The BBC invested so much money in him, and they trained him like they have never trained anybody.
"He has become really well associated with the programme. I hear that he does want to leave, the BBC said, ‘That’s enough for you’.
“I think he’s in his prime, he is very good at what he does. It seems to be some sort of personal vendetta the BBC has," Eamonn finished.
The former England striker will relinquish role at the end of the 2024-25 season, but will stay at BBC until 2026.
Gary, 63, took over in the chair from Des Lynam in 1999, and has been a presence on football fans’ screens on Saturday nights for 25 years.
He joked about leaving the BBC during an episode of Match of the Day in October, during a time of intense speculation about his future. Gary introduced the show saying: “Hello. Seven games on the way and it’s my final show … before the international break.”
He was nominated for a National Television award for his work on Match of the Day in 2017 and is one of the corporation’s best-known presenters, earning £1.35m a year.
He was taken off air by the BBC in March 2023 after writing on X that the language used by the government to launch a policy on small boat crossings was “not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s”.
Gary was later reinstated after some of his colleagues pulled out of shows in solidarity.
Speaking at the Hay festival in Powys in May, he suggested the real problem had been a critical front page headline, which was a “distortion” of his original comment.
“The one thing I do regret is that it was a fallout between me and the BBC and it should have been a fallout between the BBC and the Daily Mail,” he said.
He spoke about his future on Match of the Day in an interview with BBC Breakfast in August. Lineker said it had been a privilege to present the show for the past 25 years and that he did not know how long he had left on it.
“It depends how long they want me, I suppose,” he said.
“I love doing it at the moment. I’ve still got another year left, at least. So we’ll have to wait and see what happens.”
