Gary Lineker made a quip about Frank Lampard’s hair loss after Germany’s win over Hungary (BBC)
Gary Lineker says he will apologise to former Chelsea and England midfielder Frank Lampard after an on-air joke during the BBC’s Euro 2024 coverage ‘came out wrong’.
Lineker admits he ‘got in a bit of a pickle’ after he highlighted Lampard’s hair loss during the BBC’s live post-match analysis of Germany’s 2-0 win against Hungary on Wednesday.
After showing a clip of thousands of Germany fans celebrating a goal in the fanzone at Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, which can be seen from the BBC’s studio, Lineker said: ‘I wish they’d take that screen down then we’d see all the punters, but if they took the screen down they wouldn’t be able to watch the game would they?’
Lampard smiled and said: ‘They’d see the back of our heads, they wouldn’t turn up for that.’
Lineker then replied: ‘No, definitely not, no one wants to see the back of your head these days do they, Frank?’
Lampard quickly stopped smiling after the remark, while Lineker said he felt like an ‘idiot’ after re-watching the clip, which went viral on social media.
‘I got myself in a bit of a pickle anyway, I feel bad,’ Lineker said on The Rest is Football podcast.
‘I did this bit and I didn’t mean it the way it came out but it’s quite funny and Frank’s as good as gold, he doesn’t mind.
‘We’re at the end of the game and they showed one of Germany’s goals and then they cut to the celebration of the fans in the fans’ park which is right behind our studio just behind Brandenburg Gate. There’s a big screen so you can’t see all the fans from where we are, except when if Germany are playing, for example, and there’s the big screen but sometimes they don’t. It goes miles back, I think you can get something like 100,000 people in there.
Frank Lampard was working as a pundit for Germany’s win over Hungary (BBC)
‘So we cut up the celebration and I said, ‘that’s behind us and we could actually see them if it wasn’t for the big screen, but then they’ve got to watch the game on that screen otherwise they’d be looking at the back of our heads’.
‘And I just said, it just came out, and meant it actually about all of us, I just said, ‘you don’t want anyone really looking at the back of your head do you, Frank?’.
‘And obviously Frank is slightly thinning, and I’m slightly thinning in my old age a little bit, and I actually meant it about everyone. But when it came out, it came out a bit wrong.
‘And you know Frank does that thing where he smiles and then suddenly he doesn’t smile, which I think he’s done a commercial about it which is great, and Frank’s great fun, he won’t mind, but I must admit when I got back to the hotel and saw it on social media I went, ‘oh, you idiot’.
‘I haven’t seen him since, I saw it went viral, I will apologise because it wasn’t deliberate, it wasn’t deliberate, but I get how funny it is, those things happen in live TV, that’s live television, it’s funny, it didn’t matter.’
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