Kelvin McFilth Smears Lineker

[Update at end of post]

When the deeply unpleasant Kelvin MacKenzie returned to his spiritual home at the Super Soaraway Currant Bun this week, he lost no time in setting his trousers well and truly alight, as Zelo Street readers will have seen, pretending that he’s not into demeaning women and dissing gays, which he did rather a lot of when he edited the Sun. To make that fire burn a little brighter, Kel indulged in a side order of smearing.

The Truth is he's a sleazebag

His target on this occasion was BBC presenter and pundit Gary Lineker, who was, let us not forget, a highly successful footballer, rather than someone like Kel who just shoots his North and South off about it. Lineker is also the established lead presenter of the Beeb’s Match Of The Day, and probably earns a lot more than Kel, so that makes him fair game for the old e-kicking in the minds of Sun regulars.

Under the heading “Weakest Lineker” (Laugh? I thought I’d never start), Kel tells “Gary Lineker, who with his moustache and little chin beard is looking like d’Artagnan’s grandfather (missed the Jimmy Hill reference, then), has let it be known that he would quit the BBC if it was to lose the Match Of The Day highlights package … Don’t kid yourself, Mr Lineker, that it makes any difference who fronts football shows. It’ the matches that count, which is why Sky and BT pay billions for the rights”.

And, as Jon Stewart might have said, two things here. One, those rights are for the live broadcasts, not the highlights packages, but well done Kel for getting a Sky plug into his copy - Rupe will like that. And two, the assertion is totally untrue, and Lineker was not backward in coming forward to protest.

“I’d never ‘let it be known’ I’d leave the BBC if we lost MOTD. Kelvin MacKenzie telling lies. Who’d have thought?” he Tweeted. However, and here we encounter a significantly sized however, Lineker has next to no chance of getting redress, even if he were to take Rupe’s downmarket troops to the cleaners. And he can forget getting anything approaching common sense out of IPSO. Why so? Ah well.

He may not have said anything about what might or might not happen if the Beeb were to lose the Premier League highlights package. But he does not need to have said anything. All that Kelvin McFilth needs is someone moderately well known to have said something like “You know, I reckon Gary Lineker would quit the BBC if they lost MOTD”. If it’s a well known person, and Kel has that on record, he’s safe.

Why? Simples. Kel just has to explain that Lineker did not make any attempt to correct the statement of the well known person who he has on record making the claim. So he can then say that, by not correcting them, he allowed the claim to stand … or, to put it more succinctly, he “let it be known”. If Lineker is sceptical about that one, he should run it past his pal Piers Morgan, who knows a thing or two about red-top journalism.

Kelvin McFilth’s pants may be on fire, but at least they’re safely on fire. Allegedly.

[UPDATE 1555 hours: as commenter Tresor Lumaya has pointed out, Kel's column follows on from what Charles Sale said in the Mail last Friday. This is how he put it: "The loss of Match of the Day highlights rights in the Premier League auction could trigger the departure of star football presenter Gary Lineker from the BBC ... BT Sport have coveted Lineker as their Champions League host since they won the rights from Sky in November 2013 in a three-year agreement with UEFA that starts next season".

Having checked Lineker's Twitter feed for the period since Sale's column went live, there is no comment on that suggestion, and so he has, as I said, allowed it to stand, and has therefore "let it be known".

So that is how Kelvin McFilth will justify his supposed journalism against any complaint that Lineker may make. It's crap punditry, selective argument and lazily constructed. But Kel can legally stand it up, he's getting paid for it, and apart from that he's thick skinned enough not to care. And so he doesn't]