New Lineker Smear Unravels

The legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre and his obedient hackery at the Daily Mail have demonstrated once again that they must conform to the iron code of the tabloid press: anyone well-known who does not conform to their diktats is to be smeared, monstered, and defamed until they cease to become well-known, or fall into line. This has been the fate of former footballer and Match of the Day lead presenter Gary Lineker.

After the Murdoch goons at the Sun were unable to get Lineker sacked for showing compassion towards refugees, that paper and the Mail have been itching for vengeance, and today the Mail’s Sebastian Shakespeare has brought forth a steaming and pungent stack of whoppers to provide it: “How a loved up Gary Lineker and his ex Danielle shocked fellow passengers with their amorous display on-board a British Airways flight”.

There is more: “Lineker, polishing his halo after speaking out to support child refugees in Calais, displayed less than angelic behaviour on a British Airways plane to Italy in the early days of his romance with former wife Danielle Bux … According to fellow passenger Teresa Mahon, who shared the Club Class cabin with the loved-up couple, the former England striker and the Welsh lingerie model were on overly affectionate form during the London to Naples flight”. And it doesn’t stop there.

“Mrs Mahon was accompanied by her husband and two small children, then aged 11 and eight, and says Lineker’s amorous antics were ‘completely inappropriate’ for a public place. ’What they were getting up to opposite my children - it took everything to restrain my husband from confronting him,’ she says … ‘They actually apologised to us at the end of the flight’”. This almost sounds plausible. Except that it’s totally untrue.

Quite apart from Lineker’s Twitter dismissal of the story - “Here they go. The revengeful Mail has started with a pile of complete and utter lies. Laughable” - there is the problem that this “story” is easy to disprove. We can do this by checking with British Airways what kind of planes they use on their London to Naples service.

Club Class cabin? WHAT Club Class cabin?

Yes, this is alleged to have happened nine years ago, but the type of aircraft being used would have had a similar internal layout. And that layout, Sebastian Shakespeare, does not have a “Club Class cabin”. OH DEAR. The route - it’s from Gatwick, to save you Mail doggies the need to bother with actual research - is typically covered by Airbus A319s, configured to seat a maximum of 123 passengers.

The website provides a handy guide, which shows a layout where Club World (note correct designation) is separated from Euro Traveller (ie the cheap seats) by nothing more substantial that a curtain. Had Lineker and his partner been “overly affectionate”, the whole world would have known as soon as the plane had touched down in Naples. OH DEAR!

Worse, as can be seen, they wouldn’t even have been sitting in adjacent seats. OH DEAR again! Whoever “Teresa Mahon” is, she’s been exposed as either a patsy or a liar - and I’ll leave the inmates of the Northcliffe House bunker to find out which.

As for Sebastian Shakespeare. I have a message for him from The Days Of Football Past. Cloughie says “You’re a clown, young man”. BUSTED.